Is there a way out?

Democracy is a messy business especially in the third world countries. Even India the largest democracy where elections have been held uninterrupted, for decades, is no exception. Reports about the criminal background and corruption of Indian MPs keep surfacing. Their unwholesome misdoings have been documented in reports and a number of publications. For sampling their conduct and behaviour, one may have a look at the Tehelka archives. In the length and breadth of India, dozens of insurgencies continue. Scores of districts are practically out of government's control where writ of the state does not prevail. This has been duly acknowledged at the highest level. The state did little to bring the culprits to book, at Ayodhya. Earlier after Mrs Gandhi's murder by his Sikh guard, thousands of Sikhs were massacred in Delhi. Hardly anyone was punished for this gruesome tragedy. How many fanatical and murderous Hindus have been punished for killing thousands of Muslims and burning of their houses in Gujarat? How many churches have been burnt in India and Christians killed in cold blood over the years?!

What has sustained India is its working political party system and intrinsic resilience to cope with crisis situations. Nehru's major legacy was the establishment of supremacy of the civilian control, keeping alive a sense of sovereign independence while dealing with the outside world and creating a base for scientific research and development. Indra Gandhi's authoritarian interlude failed and is now remembered as a gratuitous aberration.

Pakistan's record is comparatively poor because of frequent military take-overs. Unfortunately we didn't have the benefit of 17 years long leadership that Nehru, so very effectively provided to India. Pakistan's weak political traditions and institutions and intermittent spell of instability in the 50s sucked the military into the body politic. The dictators, later did some good but on the whole, their arbitrary rule proved grievously disastrous. The biggest damage, done by them was the mangling of the political process and the weakening of the national and local institutions. These myopic potentates failed to understand that concentration of power in a few hands at the centre would shake the very foundations of the federation. That their unbridled handling of political and economic affairs will distort cherished values and norms. How we lost East Pakistan, how earlier the bloody Operation Gibralter was launched and how the Kashmir cause was terribly damaged by an ill-conceived misadventure at Kargil, to recall three blunderous debacles.

Prospects for democracy were dealt with a severe blow by the last military dictator when he scuttled the desirable evolving of the two-political system. Yes the political parties were under-performing and at times, indulging in undesirable acts of omission and commission but the fact remains that in the nineties the political process was moving ahead at a good pace and had it continued uninterrupted, the possibility of good days ahead could not have been ruled out. Musharraf on the one hand destroyed the nascent political edifice, and on the other foisted his own outlandish notion of real or "essence" democracy. How credible his "enlightened moderation" was may be seen in the light of his handling of the Lal Masjid syndrome and the killing of Nawab Bugti. The list of his sins is long and will easily fill a big book. We are still suffering from the fallout of his shenanigans. His quick and unthinking surrender (mostly for personal benefit) after 9/11, his referendum fraud carried out with the aid of well-provided nazims, the imposition of a made-to-order local government arrangement created to provide him with a political constituency, by-passing the sinews of the law and order system in the districts, feudalising the local administration and flooding the civilian departments with military officers - serving and retired, inducting puppet prime ministers, reducing the Parliament to a rubber stamp and pulverisation of the judiciary - these are just some of the "contributions" made by him. What however was most galling and troublesome is not his vengeful treatment of PML-N party and its leadership and his determination to keep PPP and Benazir out but the seeds of corruption and dishonesty he injected into the body-politic by entering into a horrendous deal with PPP which on one hand spawned the poisonous NRO and special safeguards for himself, on the other.