Party Leadership

In my last post, I just said that we should focus on improving ourselves and not succumb to :"Learn from X" syndrome...
Well I am actually trying to think on how can we do it by just observing others and not try to copy.

In the meantime, i was following the UK Labour Party Leadership election in which Ed Miliband pipped his much known sibling David..

Well David was UK secretary of State under Gordon Brown and a protege of Tony Blair.. He is the same man who went on poverty tourism with Rahul baba and had his foot in mouth when he offered an unsolicited advice on kashmir, which had drawn flak from all quarters and Brown had to refute it as the minister's personal opinion..

Well the election to party leadership in UK is an interesting one.. while the tories elect from MPs and the party members, Labour have an extended electoral college comprising of even trade unions as well..

As with other elections, every candidate is expected to set out policies and win votes... Seems interesting ...
In the UK the leader of the party is the leader of the government/opposition as well..

In the US of A, both the parties are run by National committees, the DNC and RNC respectively for the democrats and republicans...
The chairperson of the committee is the party head... and that person is responsible for the party alone... The government / opposition is run by senators/representatives and the head of the government is the president. The nomination for president is a separate race at the time of elections.. i would say that this is a bit complicated.. Well what else can you expect from US..

COming back to India, well talking about the two major parties.. lets take BJP first.. The BJP is a mixture of both US and UK as per my view.. The party president is elected for a fixed term of 3 years and the term is considered religiously.. Much like US the party president is responsible for party only and the government / opposition head is elected by the parliamentary party..
Much like labour party, the root organization (RSS) has a say in the party leadership.. I feel that this is a good system.. If only the BJP could win more hearts to form a government... The party seems more disciplined than any other in the country...

Another party which follows a set system is the commie group.. both CPI and CPM have politburos and religiously( or rather atheistically ;) ) elect general secretaries and so on...

Congress was a disciplined organization with a party leadership different from government before madam G.. but after madam G, the party leadership is the same as government or usually a puppet heads the party dancing to the tune of the dynasty... Off late the leadership has turned powerful after 2004.. and the government dances to the tune of the party now.. But there is no leadership contest .. only one person is nominated and elected unanimously without even alternate opinion.. well how democratic is that? People can predict who the next party president is going to be.. hmm

Same is the case with most regional parties... all being run as fiefdoms..

I dont want us to emulate anyone but atleast have some system in place and make the leadership selection more visible...

China China

I think we are badly obsessed with emulating China in whatever we do.
In Military, in industry, in conducting events so on and so forth...
But lets really give a thought for a second... Is china really that great and worth emulating? I have no doubt that China has grown tremendously and is a major power an hats off to her for the achievement. But that doesnt make me a fan of china..

Some of her policies make me nauseatic. The brutality in which lands were cleared and people oppressed to stage 2008 Beijing olympics is well known.. There were reports of how child gymnasts were trained under inhuman conditions to win medals. There were even reports of some malpractcies in other events as well.. Lets answer one question .. Does not conducting an olympics mean that a country is not great?

We tried to copy china by conducting CWG, planning for an Asiad bid and so on..
Though the intent was right in conducting an event, was it necessary to allot Rs 70K Crores?Did we at all think that the same money could be used elsewhere?

Did we monitor the progress throughout? Our media just kept mum for almost 4 years and suddenly started raking up the issue just 3 months prior the games.. Now after a whole lot of fuss suddenly everyone seems happy. Thats because everyone wants to make India happy just because they want Indian money.. What did we achieve as a country in trying to emulate china here? Loads of bad publicity and hell a lot of money that could have been channeled elsewhere..

Another of China's policies that I am not a fan of is the one child norm and the brutality in implementing that. Though one can argue about the stress that a huge population puts on a nation's resources, one cannot go on controlling births with a stick in a hand.. Lets not assume a statistical trend of growth, we should also think about the declining fertility rates before implementing a program like this.

Thank God we are not yet trying to follow China in this...
Another of China's biggest problems is that She's trying to be a US in this part of the globe or who knows she might want to see itself as the next US.. Hence all that plans to build bases in Lanka , trying to intimidate India, the main perceived rival... Lets not again emulate china in this aspect. In the pretext of trying to strengthen ourselves, lets not increase our defence budgets further...

Our biggest flaw as a nation is that we always ant to learn from others. Be its US, CHina or whoever. Why not we focus on things and make them better in our own way rather that "Learn From X" phenomenon?

I want India to be better but lets focus on the basics like agriculture, proper food distribution.. lets try to bridge the economic gap before we proclaim ourselves a superpower and show off our ability in many non essential things..

Jai Hind....