Need for a strong political leadership
CA GOPAL K AGARWAL
gopalagarwal@hotmail.com,
INDIA has the potential to emerge as a superpower. But simply
having potential will not help achieve the goal There can be mired factors
which are acting like bottlenecks towards achievement of this goal.
Emergence of strong nation requires collective will or what is called 'a can to do spirit". But to build this momentum what we require is identification of these bottlenecks and take corrective measures to remove them. In Upanishads it is said that to achieve success we need to "Investigate carefully, decide correctly and follow faithfully".
According to me the most important constraint that India is facing is weak political leadership. There are so many factors where India needs course corrections. These factors are not far to find. Anybody, groomed to social life can clearly identify that corruption; caste politics, violence, lawlessness, terrorism, etc are acting as a parasite to the national life. But there is nobody among the present leaders showing any will or determination to fight this menace. The politics of compromise is the name of the game. There is a continuous competition among the parties to capture vote-banks. To capture vote-banks money power, muscle power and even emotions are used.
The attitude to compromise on national issues to fulfill personal ambitions or meet short term political goals is the weakness of our leadership. We are caught up in a vicious circle where a weak leader will further lead to weakness in the leadership.
I don't want to be sounding negative. We can overcome this attitude. Ultimately everything comes down to simple economic principle of demand and supply. What we need is strong nationalist political leaders.
The second important factor is the lack of complete inner
democracy in all political parties. In the name of discipline every political
party has thwarted democratic values. Any party, which resorts to inner
democratic process, will be able to develop strong leadership among itself. And
once we get a strong political leadership we will be able to overcome most of
the other constraints. We can then easily achieve a strong and a well developed
nation.
