Recent events have brought home the fact very strongly that people do not have any control over the present political system, process and its institutions.

The scandalous way in which the biggest corporate houses have been controlling the governments past and present and determining their policies, revealed by the 2G and other scams, shows that the political system is under the dictate of these corporate houses. It is not accountable to the people.

Each successive election reveals that the majority of our people — workers, peasants, middle strata and intellectuals— are increasingly being marginalized. Political organizations and forces representing the people who actively organize to defend the rights of the people day in and day out do not have a say during elections. The political process is dominated by the parties of the biggest monopolies.   

The judiciary is not accountable to the people either. Nor have various institutions set up to monitor different aspects of functioning of this democracy been accountable to the people.

Enlightened public opinion has been reiterating that the executive, the legislature and the judiciary must serve the people and be under their control and supervision. 

Our people have been incessantly demanding that electoral laws be reformed so as to end criminalization of politics, the dominating role of money power, and to increase the space for people’s organizations, and ordinary people to contest elections. However, the government and the Election Commission even now, through their “public” consultations, are legitimizing the domination of parties of the money bags over the political process. They are ridiculing the participation of people and their organizations and instituting measures to curb them, after dubbing them "non-serious". 

Our people have been fighting that those guilty of state terrorism including communal massacres in 1984, 1991 and 2002 be punished, that those guilty of the Bhopal genocide also be punished. They have demanded that justice be restored for thousands of innocent people who have been incarcerated and tortured under fascist laws as "terrorists".  Present legislation and enforcement mechanisms have proven incapable of this.  

The people have been demanding that the right to life in the true sense be guaranteed. Human rights, including the right to food, clothing and shelter, education and health care, are manifest in our country more by their violation than by their fulfillment. There are no mechanisms to compel the authority to guarantee them to our people. They remain mere policy objectives.

The Lok Raj Sangathan is organizing a Public Consultation on the way forward to ensure people’s control over the political system,  process and institutions. 

People from different walks of life are invited to give their invaluable contributions to give shape to the reforms necessary to ensure people’s control over the political system. Needless to say, we urge those fighting in the frontlines for making the political system and institutions accountable, to consider it their duty to participate actively in the deliberations of the Consultation.

Looking forward to your participation,

With sincere regards

S Raghavan, 
President, Lok Raj Sangathan

Venue: Indian Social Institute
Date: April 10, 2011
Time: 9.30 am – 5.30 pm
Email: lokrajsangathan@yahoo.com
Phone: 98185 75435

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