A Lesson To Learn

While the world's largest democracy elected their 44th president today, i thought the world's biggest democracy had a lot to learn. With the 2009 general elections knocking on the door, we better understand the way the U.S Presidential race has been conducted. After a long time we saw Policy taking over Polity. This election was mainly about how national policies effect people (in the context of economy, recession), how ethical standpoint on a social issue (like race) are more imporatant than the political tug-of-war. Though the election slightly got tainted with this murk in the last phase with the entry of Sarah Palin as the Vice Presidential Candidate from the Republican side, the selection procedure of their supreme national leader has been extremely fair and square. The U.S electoral system fascinates me as the whole system of primaries and caucases through which candidates from both Democrat and Republican side has to go through to prove themselves worthy enough to lead their State. It is not exactly a party based election(like in India). It judges an individual from a particular political side in the light of personal capability, intellect, his or her stand on matters of social, economic and cultural significance and decisiveness in devising policies. Indians have a lot to learn from such an elctoral system. I completely agree that every country has its own way of selecting their candidates to lead their nation but what we can learn from the current U.S example is that how politics is never more important the people of the nation. This might sound very romantic and jingoistic but the U.S Presidential race has proven this word by word. When the Dow collapsed like a pack of cards and George W. Bush declared a $700 billion bailout, Barack Obama had every oppurtunity of first rebutting the government for which an economic crisis and then for shelling out so much money to the banks but he did not do so. He gave vent to his concern not by jeering and throwing jibes at the opposition but by addressing the grave situation with outmost sincerity of a true leader. I wish the Left and the BJP would have set such a precedent when India soared with inflation. When Barack Obama's pastor made counter rascist comments, the former did not take sides or did not venture into giving a sitting on the fence stance but went on to give one of the best discourses on history whiich would go down in history. I wish the people who have made their voice hoarse shouting the Hindutva mantra(people who cause Kandhamal,who object against the banning of Bajrang Dal and who want the operationalisation of POTA), people who are fascinated with regional(read linguistic) chest beating, people who play their Dalit card conveniently to cosy upto the Race Course road and the muslim appeasing (read people who support the archaic Muslim law board and obstruct the banning of SIMI) have a lot to learn from this African-American. In a country where Political Leaders sigh off from facing the media on one-one basis about policy matters, to convince the franchisees that why they should vote for them(political leaders), the presidential and vice precidential debates in the U.S should be watched by them. Can u imagine Sonia Gandhi andMayawati standing on the same pedestal and not making the discussion a total slug fest? Political leaders need to rise above mere party politics. There should be better communication and co-ordination between parties to support an important deal to be passed on the floor of the parliament. We certainly saw the amazing way the 123 agreement was passed in the Indian Parliament! The sight of the unscruplous politicians waving papers with the Mahatma's face on in the august house of the Parliament. Such a sight is no less a blotch on India's democracy as the emergency or the Gujrat or Bombay riots were. Moreover the election here is conducted in perhaps a clandestine manner where a party can go all the way without having a Prime Ministerial candidate or changing one if they have so at the last moment without asking for peopl's mandate. Don't we have the right to decide who should lead us? When a person so far away from home is championing Gandhian values, why we are continuously assassinating our very own Mahatma every day???