In a democracy, elections are not merely about choosing representatives and deciding which party should be entrusted with the responsibility for governance.  Elections are also about political education and determining priorities for the future. But over the decades, most parties in India have failed to utilize elections as a means of mobilizing public opinion to obtain a mandate for meaningful change.  Instead, elections have become a way of determining who will rule.

The recent debate generated by the proposal to reserve 27% seats in Union educational institutions for backward classes has predictably been very shrill and hysterical. Reservation is a classic zero-sum-game issue and polarizes society intensely, as the gains to a social group are matched by losses to another. Prejudice and bitterness in this debate must be overcome by facts and logic. We all need to step back a little and take a deep breath.

The failure of prosecution in a spate of cases in recent times once again focused public attention on our justice system. Distinguished jurists as well as political leaders and commentators are lamenting the near-collapse of rule of law, resulting from failure of justice system – civil and criminal.

The recent foreign policy debates are largely centered around our future energy needs. Frenetic economic diplomacy to secure nuclear power generation oil and gas contracts, and laying pipelines on the east as well as west to transport fossil fuels are certainly of value in the short and medium term. Long-term supply contracts and investments in exploration in oil-rich countries will give us some leverage. But we need to plan for the future with clarity in an integrated manner.

Indian higher education is in deep crisis.

As the Finance Minister gets ready to present the budget for next year, the sector which causes him the greatest anxiety must be agriculture. The past year has been relatively good in terms of rain fall and the Rabi yields should be encouraging. But in general, for over a decade now agricultural growth has been sluggish, stuck at about 2%. And there are four good reasons to be concerned about low agricultural growth rates.

One of the disquieting features of Indian politics and public policy is the colossal damage done to the rural and agricultural sector by successive governments, all in the name of the people. If the explicit objective is to undermine the rural agriculture-dependent population, our governments could not have done a more thorough and effective job!

The Compiling and release of the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), 2005 is a landmark event in the evolution of school education in India. Pratham, a reputed civil society organization conducted a nation-wide survey of school-going children in 485 rural districts. 776 small and big groups along with about 10,000 volunteers participated in this massive exercise, and assessed the elementary education outcomes on a large, randomly selected sample of nearly 400,000 children in 9521 villages.

The recent sting operations exposing sleaze of MPs certainly stirred the nation. These exposés pose a formidable challenge to the legitimacy of our political system. But the Government’s frenetic efforts to provide state funding for elections, is a classic prescription of placebos for a deep-rooted political malaise.  Public funding in itself, like placebos or vitamins, is harmless, even desirable. But this knee-jerk response does not address the underlying crisis. Two issues need elaboration.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines arbitrage as ‘the buying and selling of stocks or bills of exchange to take advantage of varying prices in different markets’.  Politics, among other things, are the ‘activities concerned with the acquisition or exercise of authority or government’.