Yoga can't save us, democracy and free markets can.

What's frightening about the Ramdev movement is its subversion of the constitutional process in putting forward a 'diktat' under the guise of popular demand, through an act that can only be seen as blackmail. What's laughable are the propositions he advocates, that the World Health Organisation (WHO) is an American big pharma "conspiracy", that his exercises can cure HIV, that capital punishment must be handed down to the corrupt, and that yoga can "rescue" India.

India is a constitutional democracy. Which means there's a due process and an institutional way to doing things. A democracy works by the power of the ballot. Propositions that must turn into law must come via that democratic constitutional process. This what ensures fairness and a guarantee that the law being enacted comes via ballot driven wishes of a state's citizenry. Laws must never be the outcome of what is positioned as 'popular' demand, and 3 day fasts.

I've said this before and say it again. Nothing's wrong with what we have institutionalised as a constitutional process. What's wrong is the way institutions have been weakened and undermined. The need of the hour is to build them back to what they must be, protectors of our constitutional rights. The need of the hour is to engineer democracy and its power to reflect what people wish for their own lives.

On the policy front, the immediate need is not to have more regulatory institutions, but to undo them so we can unleash the power of human ingenuity and eliminate corruption. That means we don't need more yoga gurus or social activists, instead what we need is more inventors and entrepreneurs. So we can have more people having jobs and working, so we can have more people earning, so there'll be more people spending.....

Also so we can have more choices, as consumers! Oh, and if Baba Ramdev really wants to fast for the common good, maybe he can take a lesson from the iron woman of India, Irom Sharmila, christened by her beloved Manipuris as 'Menghaobi' or 'The Fair One.'

Comments

Spot on Prof. Institutions have been weakened and undermined. The rot starts at the electoral process itself. Murderers and other Criminals contest from jails by spending huge black money and naturally they look for ROI :)

Also, the middle class doesn't vote..

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