General elections are going to be held in our country in 1996. A number of meetings are being held in this connection in the name of electoral and political reform. Most of articles are being published in newspapers and journals. I have myself participated in several such meetings and have read a number of articles.

After listening to people and reading than I have the feeling that consciously or unconsciously, it has been understood that there exist from political respect in the country two distinct communities—one corrupt and one clean. It has been supposed that all the politicians have come out of the corrupt community. While all their criteria belong to the clean community. But this (first premise) very supposition is basically wrong, In such a case the conclusion drawn will certainly be wrong.

A superficial study of the events is sufficient to prove the error of this supposition. After independence our political team which came to power in the country in 1947 consisted of the members of the "clean community" of Mahatma Gandhi. But once they had reached the pedestal of power, even Gandhiji was constrained to remark "who is going to listen to me now" ("Ab meri kaun sunega") is the title of a book on Gandhiji.

Afterwards in 1966 elections Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia emerged on the political scene. With great fervor and enthusiasm he launched a movement called by him non-Congressism. In the field election he did defeat the members of the ‘corrupt community’ at least in the states and consequently the members of this ‘clean community’ came to power in the states. However it dawned very soon that in practice/practically it turned out to be simply replacement; that is, changing one corrupt community from another.

Afterwards, on a bigger scale, this scene was re-enacted following the general elections of March 1977. In this historic election the supposed corrupt community met with stunning defeat. All those people now coming to power belonged to the supposed clean community. In the words of Lok Nayak Mr. Jay Prakash Narayan, this was a total revolution. But very soon we learnt that this entire supposition was again wrong. The clean community (Janata Party) again badly fell a victim to corruption. Political corruption crept in again within the ruling Janata Party. This led to be collapse of the government in August 1979 even before the completion of its term.

The truth is that this supposition of corrupt and clean community is entirely baseless. All this is related to human weakness, far from being a matter of belonging to one community or the other. Lord action has very aptly observed this truth in this words: power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.Certain things in this world have to be tolerated as a matter of necessary evil. We should also bear with the imperfect government as a matter of necessary evil. This realism is extremely necessary in order to put an end to political unrest which has vendered political stability impossible in our country.

Along with this we must also realize that a government can never do everything for us. It has its limitations. Even if it wanted it can perform only a limited sphere. It is the result of this political unawareness what we vote one government to power and then sooner than later, dissatisfied, we engage ourselves in downing the same government even before it has completed its term. If we want political stability in our country we will have to curtail our expectations with the government. Otherwise no great progress can be made.

It is said that our form of government is based on the British model. If you go to Britain during elections, contrary to India, you will not find any unnecessary furore on the eve of elections as is found in our country. The reason being that they consider, the government as one of the many institutions of the society. They know that the government can contribute to national construction only to a partial extent. On the contrary we have come to understand that the task of national construction is entirely related to the government. It is due to this misguided expectation that results in unnecessary excitement before the elections and unnecessary despair after it.

During his rule Sir Winston Churchill (1939-45) gave his people this slogan:’I will do it.’ We have instead adopted this slogan: ‘The government will do it.’ This realistic approach of the developed countries of setting only limited hopes from the government has enabled them to involve themselves in non-political fields of which they have the conviction that it is they who must perform those tasks. We, due to the contrary thinking, have come to regard that every task has to be performed by the government. Due to this thinking we failed to engage ourselves in the work of national construction which could be performed only by our active participation.

This is no simple matter but of utmost importance as it is directly related with the highly desired national reconstruction. This is in actual fact a matter of the shift of emphasis. We have diverted our attention from the more important to the less important. We have paid for it dearly as the most necessary task of nation building could not be properly performed.

Anyone of us who travels to Germany or Japan is amazed to see the progress they have made. We must give thought to what is its secret. The secret is in the fact that there the people hang far less interested in elections and government are always busy in the non-governmental institutes of national construction, for instance, educating the people, bringing awareness in them, consumerism awareness, inculcating civic sense, building associations for keeping the city clean, inculcating the feeling of respect for law among the people, taking such measures as may check adulteration from food, medicine and other things, as well as taking measures to check noise and air pollution. There are so many other such social arenas in which the people of the developed countries engage themselves. They have set up great organization and associations towards this end.

All these works at the social level provide us with the initial foundation to be build the system of a better government. Prior to 1947 we used to lay the blame for all evil upon the British. This mentality lingered on and we began expecting everything concerning by reform and progress from our government formed after independence. This is the greatest reason why we find all the rot in our country.

If you have a look at the newspaper of the developed countries, you will find very less coverage of political news and commentaries, instead the economic and scientific news and commentaries will be far more in comparison. But in our country political events find the maximum coverage, our press has fully become a politics-oriented press. It is at this point that we need to lay the most emphasis.

As mentioned above Gandhiji had said after 1947 "who will now listen to me/who is going to listen to me now." To my way of thinking this is not all that there is to the matter. Mahatma Gandhi had come to this conclusion because his addressee were these leaders who had reached the seats of power after independence. On the contrary, had he made the common Indians his addressee the result would have been quite the opposite. Now he would find people listening to him with maximum attention.

The truth of the matter is that when the national movement was launched in India, our entire energy was channeled on the front of issue political freedom. The extremely necessary task of the educating the people was almost totally ignored. After independence the chief task to be taken in hand by Mahatma Gandhi was to return to this initial front lying abandoned for long.After 1945 Mahatma Gandhi was in a position to do so along with a team, either in Delhi or Sewagram and launch a campaign of intellectual awakening through the media. He may have prepared articles and statements from the point of reforming the thinking and inculcating awareness among the people and then sending them to the journals and newspapers all over the country for publication.

Had Mahatma Gandhi taken this task in hand after 1947 each and every newspaper would most willingly publish his writings and statements. Tens of thousands of people would be reading his thoughts daily. The entire country would have been saying attention to his words. Had such a concerted, continuous struggle through the media been waged, a whole new generation of aware people would have come to exist in the country in a few years’ time. In a country where an aware group comes into existence, nothing can come in the way of its progress.

Whatever I have written above regarding the government does in no way mean that I am advocating status quo. We must continue our efforts towards the rectification of our political institution and elections/electoral reforms because our democracy is still not mature enough, it is still nor perfect. Our democratic system must be at least brought to the standard to be found in Japan, Korea, Singapore and Malaysia. However, we should not concentrate so much on the issues concerning political institutions that all other works related to other institutions suffers as a result/relegated to the background.

The need of the hour is to start even the abandoned task immediately. A team of competent persons should engage itself in the task of mass education by exploiting all the means of the media. Until the date comes when the Indian nation turns into an aware nation, our society comes to consist of the individuals who are in possession of national thinking and national character, who come to acquire the quality/attribute called scientific temper by Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru.

Hence I am not for status quo, I only write to stress hereby on the point of what our starting point should if we want a real future for our country, we must continue efforts towards the political front as well. In principle we have opted for democracy as our political system. But our democracy is still in its infancy, imperfect and immature. For this we must launch our reform campaign on long-term instead of short term basis.

To conclude, regarding the coming elections, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of the free India, had observed:

"Freedom is in peril—defend it with all your might.’

Seeing the political rot that has set in our country I would say:

‘Democracy is in peril, save it with all your might’

Out of this feeling I would like to make this appeal for the coming elections:The necessary condition of democracy is free and fair election. After freedom we gave our country free election, to a great extent, but we have failed to give it fair election. The horrible result is before us all to see.

The country is going to polls soon. We hereby appeal to people to decide unanimously to do their best to give the country fair election in order to save it from further destruction and to take it forward on the path of progress as is expected from a civilized country.

Fair election means that the election campaign is launched purely on the basis of national issues, making no attempt to misguide the voters. Besides, while casting the vote rigging has to be refrained at all cost etc.Another important point is that the party which wins the election must put its success into the service of the nation instead of using its success only to ensure its victory in the next election.