Solving the Mysteries and Miseries of India Through Public Democracy

Balarama K. Varanasi


In the international arena of cutthroat competition, only the countries with well-defined designs of social organization and verifiable fulfillment of the promise of the constitution will be able to secure the required international attention and admiration. In this context, we must understand why India is failing as a nation despite having a huge pool of technologically talented citizens, and a huge pool of dedicated workers. We should look into the problem without fooling ourselves any further. We should take advantage of the precious chance of reasonable social stability in order to define the policies that ensure the success of the nation for the next five decades and beyond.

Indians don't understand why India is in a state of contemporary mess and how we can rescue it from rapid deterioration. This article provides vital clues that make all difference in the destiny of this great nation. The problems addressed in this short article explain how we may reconcile the ancient Indian social organization with modern democracy in order to prevent the rising momentum of Hindutva agenda from damaging the secular fabric of our nation. It explains how modern world can get rid of unfavorable market trends rationally with proper application of Information and Communication Technologies. It explains how we may solve the problem of bureaucracy in our nation, how we can attract people with dedication for the nation and those with social integrity to start participating in defining the destiny of the nation. It also explains how we may improve the economic efficiency of our nation, and improve the social transparency. It also covers how we may reverse the slowdown in Information Technology, and how we may develop a comprehensive strategy for world peace and that for promoting Universal Human Rights.

First of all, let us try to understand scientifically why the political leaders of India waste their time and tax payer's money without doing anything productive. We have not set any conditions like education, criminal history, etc for someone interested in participating in Indian politics. This is so because, these representatives are there only to verify whether a social vision is in the better interest of the majority they represent. This particular task does not require education and only needs compassion for the concerns of fellow citizens. The concept of 'ruling party' and 'opposition' is a temporary provision. Many modern problems of India have arisen due to our inability to understand the basics of social justice in a country with a prolonged legacy of civilization. We can take away fog scientifically and identify clearly what we need to do.

We should understand clearly and unambiguously that the concept of 'ruling party' is serving as a caretaker till our democracy attains maturity, when we can successfully define how our social visions evolve. To do this, we must build infrastructure for providing a non-discriminatory opportunity for all enthusiasts interested in proposing social visions. It is like serving as a guardian for the inherited property when the sole heir is a minor. If the heir grows up and claims the right and if the guardian tries to bullshit any further, there will be legal consequences for such an offence. Similarly if technology permits the possibility of building the infrastructure facilitating public evolution of social visions, it will be a criminal offence against the sacred trust of the citizens if we don't pay attention. It is a serious insult to common sense in addition to being a major mockery of miseries of the common man. If we indulge in this irresponsible mode any longer, we risk the danger of a universal revolution.

Imagine a design, where a parallel infrastructure is built for the task of development of social visions, where educated Indians can play a major role in defining the social visions through non-confrontational approaches. Imagine that all democratically elected leaders verify publicly whether each vision to be accepted is protecting the interests of the majority represented by each of them. Under such condition, all of them have plenty of work, most significantly have productive work that promotes the welfare of the nation. Public verification of social vision through public forum takes away opportunities for making quick money through corruption. Hence idiots will soon leave Indian politics while public-spirited people can start the work of repairing the nation ravaged by a few decades of negligence and corruption. There's plenty of work. It is time we get started in order to secure the future of our children, which is being ruined ruthlessly with each passing day due our absence of initiative and imagination.

Two democratically elected leaders competing with each other is plain bullshit, for neither of them is capable of proposing and proving social visions. For example, what would be the logic why an MP from Uttar Pradesh should ever be arguing with an MP from Andhra Pradesh? Similarly why should a MLA from Chittoor ever engage in a debate with a MLA from Anantapur? That is unproductive and illogical work and a country under intense competition and aspiring to receive recognition for excellence just can't afford such irrationality. On the other hand, imagine that a social vision evolved through participation of educated citizens in a defined manner, and it is up for evaluation. It makes a lot of sense to define that all of the elected leaders should verify the impact of such a vision on their constituencies. Under this scenario, politics of the country attracts responsible and public-spirited citizens.

Everybody describes the Four-Caste System of ancient India as follows: There are four groups in the society that followed certain rigid code of conduct, and that there are claims with questionable credibility that such a system resulted in the best social integrity. And the extrapolation of the idea made the society entrench itself into further divisions, which are all being attributed to the concept of the caste system while the ancient History has emphasis only on the four castes. Many people claim that the integrity of social organization of ancient Indians may be a myth. Unfortunately, the absence of integrity of modern political and business leaders of India is a verifiable fact.

Above description of four groups puts India in a mode of continuous struggle between the past and the present. There is another way to look at the same history. The division of the society into four groups was an implementation detail to achieve a certain feat. We should concentrate on what such a system accomplished - that holds the key to social integrity of ancient Indians. Focus on what the ancient Indians accomplished and whether we can do it today instead of getting distracted with the details how they accomplished their objectives.

The Four-Caste System of ancient India states that with every social vision, there are four tasks. They are:

a) The task of proposing and proving social vision in a public forum

b) The task of verifying and approving social vision in a public forum

c) The task of supervising the social vision with publicly proposing and proving transition plans, project plans in a public forum

d) The task of serving it by abiding the conditions accepted in a public forum.

The Village Panchayat System of ancient India is unique in the World, which served as a model through which social visions could evolve in public forums through passive participation of the entire society. Such a solution of public development of social visions was the Indian standard of social integrity. The Brahmans of ancient India were facilitating the process of public evolution of social visions by developing a philosophical foundation for evaluating social visions and by pioneering strategies promoting social consensus. Proposed concept of Perspective Independence develops an equivalent on a scientific foundation for evaluating and understanding the details associated with the process of designing social visions.

The Village Panchayat System of ancient India was used as a dual-purpose solution - for the evolution of social visions and for enforcing acceptable social conduct. The first attribute was its strength and the system is defective when used for the task of enforcing social conduct. However, when the system worked, as many social problems were prevented due to increased social transparency and general prosperity, its usage for the task of enforcing social conduct was very minimal.

India is a poor third world country today as the defect of the Panchayat System is being maintained at several places while the merit of it in facilitating public evolution of social visions is totally forgotten. At the time of independence of India, above system was not suited for the development of more complicated social visions common in the contemporary world. However today our strength of communication and information technologies has reached such heights that it is possible to facilitate the public evolution of social visions without compromising the principles of our constitution. Hence, if we don't pay attention to this area of opportunity, we have compromised in paying attention to the violations of fundamental rights of the citizens from the developments that occurred during the last decade.

Though ancient India was mostly religious, it was not one nation and not even had only one religion. Remember that the followers of Shiva and Vishnu fought equally fiercely as Hindus and Muslims today. We must understand that the concept of Religion in ancient India was a union of many ways of promoting social justice and individual's emotional enlightenment. Indians have accomplished the task of reconciliation, not just once but several times in the past. Doing it once more is simply a piece of cake. We should not damage the unity of all Indians and the integrity of our social organization by continuing the divisive politics introduced in the nation by those interested in subduing the nation into submission It is the duty of every educated citizen and the media to promote such an understanding. We should learn to be humane and define it as an attribute of every Indian. The attributes like Aryan, Muslim or Christian indicate a civilized man.

The history of India indicates that the entire sub-continent is a union of Nations where different religions and nations had the same model of Four-Caste System for spiritual, social, economical and political purposes. Among them, only the realm of spirituality depends on Faith. If we limit our scope to exclude the realm of spirituality, we still have social, economic and political solution of Indian origin that can be discussed and evaluated in a scientific foundation without offending the Faith of anyone. And such a discussion can point us to solutions for all contemporary problems.

The Western Concern of Non-Discrimination is the best standard of social integrity of a recent civilization compared to the Indian legacy. Interestingly, above concern does not conflict with the Indian standards of social integrity, which insists on a public development of social visions and a foundation for evaluating social visions, generating consensus, etc. Most of the problems like unpredictable market trends of modern capitalism are due to the absence of recognition for the ancient Indian standards of social integrity. In order to achieve the reconciliation of the past and the present of India, we should state clearly and unambiguously that we must design a non-discriminatory opportunity for each of the above four tasks associated with each social vision.

In order to protect the interest of the majority, we need two components. We need one wing that verifies whether a vision in the best interest of the majority. We also need another wing that pioneers social visions and volunteers to explain in public forums why such a vision is in the interest of the majority. Each wing should do their homework and discuss in public forums in order to evaluate a social vision. If an educated citizen would like to improve the strength of an evolving social vision, he or she will contact the group in charge of developing social visions, and makes a suggestion through a non-confrontational approach by making an appeal to logic. On the other hand, uneducated or underprivileged persons take their concerns to their democratically elected leaders as a group and appeal for social compassion through a non-confrontational approach. Since the acceptance of a social vision is in the better interest of the entire society, it is quite easy to request a part of the future proceedings for the welfare of the poor. Proper judgement requires reconciliation between creative thinking and bureaucratic verification. This is how Human brain works. If we realize this simple truth, we can get rid of frustration from the face of the Planet. Shouldn't we look at it further as a means of reducing terrorism?

Modern democracy only emphasizes on the design providing a non-discriminatory opportunity for those in charge of approving social visions. On top of such foundation of social stability, we must design a non-discriminatory opportunity through which citizens should be able to propose and prove social visions in public forums passively through non-confrontational approaches. If any democratic society develops social visions in public forums, with proper participation of the public and with a true concern for the public of the nation, we call it a public democracy. Public democracy is a next generation standard of social integrity, which is provably superior to that of modern democracy. It is suitable to all nations on the planet, can improve the economic efficiency of both the developed and developing nations, in addition to building the framework that can provably reduce the disparities around the world.

The public democracy we propose is an extension of modern democracy that can be built with the infrastructure known as Internet Panchayat System and a concept legitimizing the participation of citizens in the process of development of social visions known as Public Interest Intellectual Property Right(PI-IPR). PI-IPR must be intuitive for every Indian. It is an extension of the existing framework of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) aimed at serving a different niche. While IPR defines how individual (firm) ideas can translate into individual (firm) wealth, proposed concept of Public Interest Intellectual Property Right(PI-IPR) defines how collective wisdom can be translated into collective wealth. As a civilization with a prolonged history, India has plenty of collective wisdom that can translate into wealth but none of us could take advantage of it, as it is collective property. While the concept of IPR an incentive for the private enterprise to take lead in order to stimulate the economy, PI-IPR is an incentive for educated Indians, Universities and public-spirited social groups to take lead and facilitate efficient coordination of economies and technologies through voluntary citizen participation without central control.

The reason for the slowdown in Information Technology is the inability of the world to identify a project that is required, has standing with respect to social justice and can generate revenues in excess of the cost of the project. If we have an agreement on this, we can identify an innovative theme through which India can strive for international prominence for technology, statesmanship and democratic values. On the legitimacy of PI-IPR, we can identify the innovative project that reverses the slowdown in Information Technology. In other words, we demonstrate a project, which is required for India, can promote the rights of all educated citizens to that of proposing social visions, and can generate revenues in excess of the cost of infrastructure. We just have to build the infrastructure known as Internet Panchyat System, which can reliably provide a non-discriminatory opportunity for all educated Indians to propose social visions through non-confrontational approaches.

If we stop and think through, it may not be difficult to take charge and develop rational strategies of reconciliation instead of helpless reliance on military missions. If we do so, we can reverse the slowdown in Information Technology, establish the world on a steady course of sustainable economic development, verifiable democratic values and universal human rights. Our views come handy when the world tries the path of arrogance through the missions of global coalition against terrorism, missions in Iraq and finally finds them all to be futile. One and only reason why India is in such a bad shape today is that all Indians are irresponsible, and they take such arrogance for granted as acceptable social behavior. When there is a change in this attitude, it does not take more than a decade for this country to be among the top 5 most prosperous nations on the Planet. Unfortunately no one has the time to think about the true potential of this great nation. Perhaps nobody cares to do so.



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