North Korea Is Just Like Us

The news that the North Korean supremo, Kim Jong Il, has been re-elected to office should be carefully read by all those who support Indian democracy, although it is a socialist-fascist monopoly in which liberals cannot participate.

Note how the news report says that the North Korean parliament is basically a “rubber stamp.”

And compare that to our own Lok Sabha, which met for just 32 days last year, and passed 8 bills in 17 minutes without debate; indeed, amidst a “din” – as reported here.

The IHT news report on North Korean democracy says that candidates for election are “handpicked” by the ruling Workers’ Party (what a lovely name!): actually, the situation is much the same in India, what with “seat sharing” among all the parties. In India, candidates do not emerge from the people; they are handpicked by higher echelons of the political hierarchy.

With pre-poll alliances between political parties and the resultant “seat sharing,” there is no real “competition” between parties and candidates. Rather, what emerges is ONE great big political CARTEL.

Hence the “rubber stamp” Lok Sabha. Hence a political executive that is above The Law, and above Parliament too. Note that the political executive emerges from the Lok Sabha – and that prime minister Chacha Manmohan S Gandhi was never elected by the people.

Seems quite like North Korea to me.

And do not forget that the North Koreans have just launched a satellite, and have a space programme as ambitious as ours. They have nuclear weapons too. And the North Korean State controls “education.” The North Korean people are extremely poor, their society is devastated, but they have a glorious and powerful "democratic" State. Ha!

Just like India.

And in North Korea, as the news report points out, Kim Jong Il is grooming his son to succeed him – quite like our own Rahul Gandhi.

We in India must take further note of the fact that our Election Commission is deeply politicized. The current chief election commissioner is close to the BJP – and he advised the government to sack another commissioner, who is close to the Congress. Since the government is Congress-led, the advice of the CEC was rejected. Indeed, instead of the sack, the Congressman in the EC has been named as the next CEC! Read the news here.

Cartel?

Thus, the news that a Competition Commission of India (CCI) has been constituted should be greeted with howls of derision. The body is supposed to act against cartels and its approval will be required for all acquisitions and mergers. In reality, all that is required for free competition is open entry into all markets. In India, most markets are closed. Civil aviation is a case in point: the sector was wide open and there was full-blown competition until the government killed it by raising taxes on aviation fuel to sky-high levels, thereby forcing most low-cost airlines into mergers. If competition barely exists today, it is the civil aviation ministry that is to blame.

Further, it is our The State that runs monopolies and cartels – as in steel, as in roads, in electricity, in water – and even in booze shops in Delhi, where the competition commission is headquartered.

The conclusion: Our The State is nothing but a bundle of lies and deceit. It is run by a political cartel, one which includes the top bureaucracy. They call it “democracy” but it is much like East German and North Korean democracy, very far removed from the basic democratic ideal – that power must be diffused, not centralized. Overseeing this democracy is a politicized Election Commission, comprising politicized bureaucrats. Ditto with the new Competition Commission.

Pretty ugly, huh?