I just went across the profile of the candidate whom has won the BBMP election from my ward. I 'shamefully' admit to have voted for this person. Given that I had little info on the three candidates contesting, I just went by the party.
Now, I do realise that this great person is a 2nd PUC failure!!
Do you have any better luck, corporators that you be proud of?
And, considering that we have pushed ourselves in the levels of education since the Constitution was drafted in 1950, and considering that the urban electorate is a little more educated than the semi-urban or rural parts - Isnt it the time for us to review the minimal educational requirements of our candidates, atleast for urban local bodies?
With only such candidates on offer, can we ever expect them to understand the various issues of administration, let alone solve them? Your thoughts, rants, and solutions appreciated!!
-Srivatsava V
Forward this Blog entry
Comments
Hi, It is a sorry state when
Hi,
It is a sorry state when we go to elect our representatives. It is like choosing from the worst. The election commisision board should chart out a clean strategy and plan for list of parties, and rules for qualification ( i mean in terms of education, age and code of conduct ). The ground rules may have been there, but there is no such implementation of the same i guess.
I am not sure if this is the right approach or a corrective idea, but the president of india ( for the country) and the governor of the state should be more active and should voice his concern on these electoral proceedings.
The elite, educated class have not voted.... in fact i have not exercised my right to vote.. You have candidates from a cobbler, waste-collector, etc etc contesting for elections.. So I know that electing him as a corporator would not clear the current scenario but he would mess it up more.
Why vote then? Up in the centre, we have chief ministers builiding statutes after statues, but there is no stop on this. I am still not clear why the president and prime-minister are mute spectators. In one of the discussions aried on NDTV a program featuring "We the People:", a discussion on this was happening on the crores of ruppes being wasted in form of a garland, but what is the ues.. Talk ,Talk and Talk, but such culprits will get away. Where is the end for such atrociites, mis-use and poor leadership.
Again who will bell the cat (if you and i and the rest ) who have a common intterset to see a change in the electoral list??? At the state we may be speaking of a BBMP election, and at the center it is worst. The news channel is more interested in covering SANIA -MANIA hyped marriage - such issues are very common among the poorer sections of the society... which is a very sensitive issue here.
Ulitimately it is a power- game coupled with money and corruption. And if we dream of a cleaner govererance, where should we start then- if you see there is corruption everywhere, and why there is corruption, because reservation - or quotas in the government sector comes to picture, the general community or the educated masses are shying away from it.
any more views?
Regards,
Neeyathi
Live and Let Live
Hi Srivastava, In our
Hi Srivastava,
In our country, no one would be surprised to find an elected representative who is a PUC fail. Even 5th std failed thugs can become corporators and MLAs and even ministers in this "great" democracy. If you read today's Bangalore Mirror you can find how many candidates who are the wives of rowdies have been elected. One candidate even filed his nomination papers when he was out on parole. This is a prime reason why people have no faith in the system and in a way, we cannot always blame educated people who stay away from participating in the electoral process. Its high time, that there is a complete revamp in the system.
Rgds,
Sathyan
My thoughts, rants, and solutions...
... but no appreciation expected :) Just my 2 cents..
Yes, I do have same feelings here and would like to share with you all. While I said here that revolution is only way, that does not mean let us not wait for it to happen. We will be the change to bring the change.
Now back to the topic. The fact is the we have already elected people with poor educational back ground and poor/no professional background. This was inevitable as all of you said above. So what next? Can not we achieve excellence with given setup? Do we think, just because our corporators are less educated, they are not intelligent? Don't we think if they are professionally mentored/trained to do their jobs, they can excel?
The answer is partially yes. It will require systematic planning and execution as a project (praja project ? Similar one which had BMTC interaction).
My thoughts on solutions:
1) Collect background of all members. educational ,financial , family, cultural
2) Categorize/Classify. Say 3-4 categories.
3) Analyze the needs of each category to perform.
4) Design the system to mentor them (via crowdsourcing, I am a fan of it)
5) Implement via non-profit orgs. BBMP will/need not spend for such things.
6) Evaluate corporators after mentoring.
7) Get feedback and improve system for next set.
We have 5 years to do this job.
So now, I am trying to summarize the background information available in public domain of candidates in an excel sheet. This should give us bigger picture of BBMP composition. I will post in this thread once on or before 08-Apr-2010.
Let us see where/how it goes with you all.
Link to datasheet
Here is the datasheet I am working on. As I believe in crowd-sourcing all are welcome to add details. The source of data is from BBMP website link 1 and link 2 . link 1 gives you official results and link 2 gives you affidavit submitted by candidate which contains partial details we want.
puc fail
what has somebody's performance in puc got to do with his performance as a public servant?
Chances improve with better educated
TS,
1) Generally, I think the chances of someone performing better as a public servant would be better if he is more educated - there will be exceptions & it might even be possible that someone who is well educated performs much poorer than an illiterate.
2) To take this country ahead, especially since there are so many inhibitions to be overcome (such as caste system, dowry, corruption, etc.), the chances of an educated person doing better than illiterates is brighter, again with the same exceptions.
Proud of my Corporator- Education vs illiterate
going forward this discussion, i would l ike to add some more views on it...
In a nutshell the point to be understood is that economic upliftment will not lead to mental grooming- one has to be educated to serve his constitutency or a country. The essence of leadership and grooming comes from education.
It is time that electoral commission or whosoever is the governing body come up with some code of conduct for contesting the elections.
No candidate should be elected a second term.
There should be only two recognized political party- The ruling party and the opposition.
Regards,
Neeyathi
Live and Let Live
surprised
I am frankly a bit surprised by this thread. So far we have seen
- bashing up of a politician (corporator) because he failed to pass PU
- proposal to make educational qualifications a pre-requisite (as if our degrees gaurantee 'education')
- create new 'projects' to solve problems outside the 'system' (more NGOs to do what Govt is supposed to do)
- introducing a 2 party system (don't we already have this?)
- Restrict terms of office to 1 (imagine the consequences!)
..
I respectfully suggest couple of alternatives
A. Contest elections
B. Make true community leaders contest elections. Work hard to get them elected.
C. Join Politics. I know at least one good party that you won't be ashamed of being associated with.
Srinivas
(full disclosure: I'm a member of Loksatta Party)
puc fail
naveen, ok. but still does not answer the basic question and definitely does not justify apriori slandering a man's reputation on a public forum. i may be wrong, but to me it appears that it is too early for all this mayyi kayyi parchkoLing.
niyati. no second term. no second term is tricky. no second term could possibly mean no vested interests, but it could also mean suboptimal decision making based on limited horizon of a single term. for example, every single decision by every single US president is basically about his possible 8 years. beyond that they have no game. take obama and afghanistan for example. does any of his pre-stated goals make sense to you? no. they wont simply because obama has a maximum of 8 years. under those constraints any rational man will only try to avoid the proverbial beeso doNNe and never get to why there has to be a doNNe that beeses in the first place.
Too much focus on elections?
This is more in response to Srinu's comments.
First, I too am surprise to read a few comments.
Vote, take interest and track, and complain like hell. These 3 things would do, don't anything more to change our city, state or country.
vote for lesser evil?
Our only duty is to vote, and then track. Everyone doesn't have to join a political party and contest elections. "Be the change you want to see" is the most misused and mis-understood quote of all times.
Who do you vote for? Everyone doesn't have to join a political party and contest elections if there are decent political parties and half decent candidates in the fray.
The fact is we have neither and hence the need for us (most definitely readers of praja!) to be involved in politics. Either by contesting or finding right persons to contest and make their candidature reach the voters. If you can do it without being in politics, thats great, but if you need a platform of like minded individuals who can put up a sustained effort, being in a party helps.
If you can be proud of your 'candidates', there is no need to do anything other than vote
the only answer for bad politics and terrible politicians is good politics and good politicians.
Alternative
Srinu sir - you are definitely right, and Lok Satta is a great movement, which many here should, and may eventually want to join.
However:
That is not the only way. A cheaper and easier route is:
Or, let me put it the other way:
Having said all of above, do I have anything against Lok Satta, or are we in disagreement? No! Because joining politics is also one way of being a good and demanding citizen.
Doubts..
Getting into NGO mode to fill gaps that shouldn't exist (govt not doing a job it is supposed to do) is arguably worse than keeping quiet and not complaining about the gap.
I did not get this sentence. Does this mean offering solution/help via NGOs using a scientific way is not the right way?
... and complain like hell.
Probably their should be better channel. Will a complaint by a common man(without backing of an influencial person or money) be taken care , whatever number of time he complaints? Imagine a poor resident alone going to a crorepathi corporator (leave qualification aside).
Am I deviating from core subject?
The cheaper and easier route ..
hey sb, I know how you feel about Loksatta and I understand where you are coming from.
my comments were not about loksatta but about the reluctance to go anywhere near 'politics' and looking for 'easier' approaches
how can 'good and demanding citizens' make a difference? you're still dealing with a politican that you are not proud of (btw, that's the original topic here)
that politician became elected representative not because of you, but because of buying ticket and buying votes and taking favors and doing a number of things that we all are well aware of.
once he/she becomes the elected reprsentative, what is going to be their priority?
if you 'invest' Rs 40-50Lakhs for a job that pays less than Rs 5000 pm, how much time are you going to spend on good and demanding citizens' problems?
in recent elections we saw 'highly educated orthopedic surgeon' candidate caught redhanded distributing sarees. why does he bank on such things instead of selling himself as a educated canddiate with public service record?
how will we ever break this cycle unless we have candidates (and campaigners) that simply run on personal record and take a pledge that they will not buy votes come what may. the longer we stay away, the worse things get.
having said all that, being active and demanding citizens is a million times better than being cynical and passive. I salute those of you that do that and request you to consider good politics as a powerful mechanism. you can support good politics in many ways.
Our politics is a joke
Why should PUC pass or fail matter? An elected representatives only job is to represent majority interest. He/she has to know the problems, know what people want.
Not always & not the only job - Majority of the people will ask for regularization (or legalizing) building violations - should these elected representatives agree since it is the majority's wish ? This is one place where better education, ethics & integrity might improve the chances for these representatives to act rationally & go against public opinion by imposing recurring fines as long as buildings remain in violation.
that politician became elected representative not because of you, but because of buying ticket and buying votes and taking favors and doing a number of things that we all are well aware of
Parties shell out millions in campaigns to buy votes & then compete to dole out midday meals, subsidy on fuel, power, water, etc. instead of working hard on attempts to ensure that PDS & subsidy becomes more efficient for BPL families. No serious attempts are ever made to severely punish any & every act of malpractice in the distribution setup, or to find ways to plug leakages.
Bheema - sorry
Sorry Bheema - corrected that line. I meant to say this. Complaining about the gap is arguably a better option that getting into NGO mode to fill that gap yourself. I didn't word this well enough, corrected my last comment now, thanks for pointing out
Its like each of us have a role in the setup, or the so called "system". We all need to do our jobs. And that includes consuming services provided by the government, as well as complaining about services are not upto expectations.
Your point is right though Bheema - will complaints from common citizen's be heard? I don't know, but first thing you me and everyone should work for is - ask for availability of channels and systems in govt service providers to take in our complaints.
These things exist on paper today. BBMP, BESCOM, BWSSB etc - they all have complaint hotlines, email ids etc. Will be good to find out their usage levels - how many complaints are received, and how many are acted upon? Are reasons provided fot those that are not acted upon?
srinu - you are right
Srinu - late reply - but you are right, I definitely agree that this fashion of avoiding politics or politicians (oh, they are not educated, oh they are corrupt etc are some excuses) doesn't serve any of us any good purpose. And I will walk the talk on this by joining a political party some day.