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Much of my free time now goes into reading and learning about community building and citizen movements. One of the pioneers of this field in India is Ramesh Ramanathan, writer of the Mobius Strip column for MINT and founder of Janaagraha, “A movement to include people’s participation in public governance, which has now evolved into a robust institution for Citizenship and Democracy.”

Besides his groundbreaking work, Mr. Ramanathan is able to go past the superficial issues on hand and articulately identify what really ails our political and social system. Three recent articles in particular provide great insight into issues that are on everyone’s mind since the 26/11 attacks.

1) Our politicians are useless but are we responsible citizens of the largest democracy in the world?

For years, India’s upper classes have been waltzing through life making minimal contact with the government. We have been going above the government, below the government or around the government, but we never really engaged with the government.

Last week in Mumbai, all that changed for India’s aspirational class.

We’ve come up against the one issue where we can’t dodge the dependence on the state: terrorism. Suddenly, we are waking up to discover that the same state that we have ignored for the past 60 years is necessary for us to make sense of our lives (a visceral glimpse into the life of the poor). And with it comes a whole new definition of the citizen-state relationship. This is existential exfoliation.  (more…)

2) “I want to make a difference but don’t know where to begin.” For those who get past this initial conundrum, it’s a struggle to become relevant!

On the politician front: many politicians have told me over the years that the urban middle class is irrelevant. Politicians are market players, they react to the signals they receive from the people. So, this observation is not a value judgement, it’s a statement of reality.

Politics in India is still substantially driven by identities of caste, subcaste, subcommunity within that. Elections are like chess games, with each major party watching whom the others are nominating in each constituency like hawks and then working to break the numbers: getting relatives from the opposition candidate’s family to stand, incentivizing some independent candidates to step up, buying off others who could swing key blocks. With each move, the calculated aim is to splinter the electoral math and nudge the needle by the barest minimum margin for victory. (more…)

3) So then are we living in a false democracy? Read this story about a murderer from India living a new life in Dubai.

“But this is strange, are you blaming India’s democracy for you being a criminal? You are the one who committed the crime. So they should have caught you and put you behind bars, is that your complaint?”

“Yes! How can people get away? Here, if I had done anything similar, I would have lost my life. Maybe if they had caught me when I was doing petty crimes, I wouldn’t have slid down this path. Dekhiye, we all want to live good lives, but majboori hai. We need to know that the system works. Bura insaan bhi sudharna chahta hai. Everyone wants to reform and live a clean life. But if the system allows you to remain bad and actually makes things worse and forces you to take the wrong path, where is the hope? (more…)