Everyday I read some columns in various newspapers and what I find intriguing is the same issue again and again, articulated by leading thinkers of our age. To be fair, thinkers are no more. Articulators and commentators are many around the spotlight. Nobody pays heed to the role of people in the dismal performance of our institutions. Institutional safeguard cannot be a singular method to enhance freedoms of our fellow citizens. Institutional pragmatism has its own limitations. It cannot change the nature of the governors and governed. People are the sole guardian of every valuable thing humankind has achieved with steady struggle. No institution is perfect, but it can be made perfecatble. For we need to avoid imitation games. We are too much obsessed with copying everything from others. The best way to check institutions across the board cannot be uniform everywhere. We need to work on human resources and devlopment. Better people are the solution for the better institutions and the vice-versa is not equally true. Election Commission, Judiciary, Lokpal, CVC, CBI, or Democracy as a whole for that matter; they'll perform in efficient way only when the crisis of non-availability of the principled-citizens is sorted out. We don't have any plan to enhance the efficiency of the public education and the health systems in this country. We are trying to top-dressing everything in the name of rule of law. And what it is; even the top lawyers of the country has no idea about the concept, though they may write voluminous books on the subject. Rule of law becomes a rhetoric; depicts nothing but political aesthetics of the great men. In fact rule of law in practice is something else; somewhere the praxis of practice doesn't fit to any standard narrative.
Institutions, to my mind, cannot be a bulwark for freedom and democracy, only people can be; for that we need to question, if at all we are working for the meaningful education, or maintaining the British attitude to create a millions machines for better and efficient profitability. Human cannot be a commodity, a machine. Human is the goal in itself. Unfortunately, everyday we are quibling for utopian building-blocks. But, our far-sightendness is lost the moment pauperization of our imagination becomes too visible to cover up. Freedom is our choice. We have to decide either to invest in institutions or in people for whom we are creating these institutions. If latter issue is resolved the former won't exist!
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