A friend of mine asked me today “What will be the first thing that you will do if you were to be made the prime minister of India?”
India today lacks political accountability and that is the root of all problems. A politician can promise heavens before the elections and get away without delivering anything that he had promised. Even if there are corruption (or criminal) cases, filed in the courts against the politicians, they don’t stand due to lack (!) of evidence, or will go on for decades together. People very well know that the politicians like Mulayam, Laloo, Mayawati are all corrupt and criminals, but their hands are tied, at the most they can vote them out of power. that’s it.
In the IT industry, a project manager who is responsible for a project worth even 100000 USD, will be held accountable if the project goes for a toss. He will have to explain what went wrong, prepare a lessons learnt report, take corrective steps and what not..
What punishment will the politicians of India get when they fail to deliver? Isn’t it a criminal case that could be booked under section 420 of the Indian Penal Code for cheating the people, for not delivering what had been promised by the politician?
So the first thing I would do would be to bring about a new law in the country to ensure political accountability.
As per the new law, during every elections, the electorate will also give a performance rating to their current representative for his/her performance as an MLA, MP or corporator in the previous term. So as a voter, apart from voting to select a new candidate, you can also vote to say whether you were happy with the performance of your current sitting representative with a simple ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.
If more than 75% of the voters feel that the previous elected representative did not perform upto their expectations, then the previous elected representative will be given 5 years of rigorous imprisonment on charges of cheating the voters of his constituency. This will be a verdict from the people’s court “Janata Ki Adalat” and is not questionable in the courts, and will be a non bailable offence!
To make more sense, the law would make any vote invalid if, a voter has voted saying he is not happy with the performance of the sitting representative and at the same time has again voted for the same representative for a new term.
This law would ensure that politicians who don’t deliver will be punished accordingly. I don’t think any politician or political party today has the guts to pass this law.
Will I become the prime minister of India? Well, Gandhi had once said, be the change you want to see in the society