India is truely a wondorous country. It has so many surprises and contradictions to offer. Today I want to discuss one such contradiction. Having stayed in Bengal all my life, I have been in close contact with the working of the CPI-M party which has been in power for a long 33 year stretch. This is a strange party that has made its mark in the strange democratic conditions of India.
In the Indian democratic political structure, the people are to elect their government. Various political parties vie for votes during the elections and the party with the largest number of elected representatives form the government. This government that is formed is run by the party which has formed it and the policies of the party is reflected in the policies of the government. This structre is similar for both the central and state governments.
All the political parties in India are run by politicians who have been elected to the assemblies at one point of time or the other. They form a small core committee that decides the policies of their parties. The Communist parties in India are unique in this respect. They have a core committee of leaders called the Politburo, which decides the policies of the parties. The unique part is that most of the leaders in the Politburo are not and never have been elected representatives of the people. They decide policies issues and influence the working of the parties. The elected members of the Communist parties are, thus under the command of people who do not represent the people. These non-elected people more or less run the governments that are formed by the elected members of the party. Does this not destroy the spirit of democracy that India proclaims to stand for? I have thought it over and tried to reason but have not been able to fit this kind of political formation into a democratic structure. Why has such an anomaly been allowed to exist in the Indian democracy? Can somebody please help me understand it?
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