I quote your summing up line "The Indian Constitution which allows deals such as this, as well as international treaties and agreements to be reached without democratic consultation, needs an amendment to make public debate and referendums mandatory and pre-conditional. We need an approval from the Indian electorate before we agree to sign the agreement." Fine and a excellent suggestion, but are you prepared to make this suggestion a universal thing for all controversial issues in this country. If so are you prepared for a referendum on your activities in the states of gujarat, madhya pradesh, maharashtra and rajasthan, the states where the narmada flows and the states that are benefitted according to me, but according to you the places which has been hurt by the narmada project. Finally if you lose more than three referendrums, are you prepared to stop all your activities since that shows the people of this country do not support you. If not , my question is why not? Finally indian democracy is not matured enough to understand the issues at hand, it is more a ritual wherein the majority make a uninformed decision on the spur of the moment based on consideration of that moment rather than think of the past or the future. Given the present scenario it is not advisable to talk of referendrums.
RE:A question to Ms Medha
by on Aug 24, 2007 09:43 AM Permalink
I would completely agree to mariappan's point of view. when one tries to draw a parallel to the american democratic system, one must understand they debate to arrive at a conclusion & apparently a well-informed majority decision. one just cant be sure that the indian elected representatives have the intellectual quotient & wherewithal to grasp such critical matters, not to mention the political myopia that they often succumb to. in this scenario, the best-of-worst scenario is to leave the such decisions, especially foreign policy related, to a select group of elected representatives & hope that they have the wisdom to take the right decision. too many cooks spoil the broth & this is evident from the lack of consensus on several domestic policy matters. indian politics still has a long way to go before it could be termed as mature.
