Money power in the Election process

Alot of money (both black and white) being used by the politicians during campaigning and bribing, changes the face of the election. This makes the situation just opposite to free and fair elections indirectly. The problem continues unabated because-

1. The candidates spend a lot of money during elections and once they come into office, they try to recover that money by resorting to all kinds of illegal and corrupt practices during his tenure in power so as to fund his next election, thus creating a vicious cycle of black money.

2. Filing for the nomination as a candidate and producing fake financial documents, educational documents and related documents required for nomination through forgery involves money.

3. Bribing candidates to step down or recall their names from the election lists, to kill competition or avoid diversion of votes, depriving the citizens a worthy representative

4. Race of over spending among the candidate to woo voters.

5. Different stake holders provides huge amount of money and muscle power to the candidate during elections and in return, politicians pay them anyhow, leading to the vicious cycle of crony capitalism.

6. Criminalization of politics leading to more no. of candidates from criminal background

However some of the following can be done to curb the money problem in the election-

1. Election commissioner must be given more powers and it must act in a harsh manner in the cases related to corruption.

2. Stringent policing and monitoring mechanisms on election campaigns to check illegal money transfers should be implemented.

3. Education and awareness to the voters for creating a healthy democracy.

4. Strict vigilance on last hour drops out contestants, their actions, and seeks proper citations for the decisions.

5. Debarring candidates from criminal backgrounds to contest elections.

6. Mass media should act in non partisan manner and enforcing a stringent action against paid news.

7. Speedy trial of election disputes must be done by special courts.

8. Most importantly, citizen should stop selling their votes.

There is an urgent need to bring in some reforms in the election related issues as this has become a menace in the path of Developing our society. It is very necessary that role of money power is reduced in election as a citizenry participation requires that election are fought on the basis of policies rather than money.

Huka V Awomi, Satoi Town (Thsuruhu Village)

digitisation has done is to push a person high or low in the organisation’s hierarchy, into ‘mechanical’ dependence on the online information and the computerised ‘deductions’ made on it. This has the effect of ‘shrinking’ the work outlook of the employee to a mere ‘compliance’ mode in regard to the do’s and don’ts of the desk

Reskilling should not aim at multi-tasking alone but basically also at creating awareness about utilising only ‘reliable’ data in these days of misinformation, about the need for keeping ‘security’ of communication intact and about the importance of marshalling information that would help ‘knowledge-based’ decision making at any level. On the whole the capacity to think is on a discount and so is the ‘spirit of inquiry’ that is basic to acquisition of knowledge.

‘Google search’ has taken away the importance of a healthy memory that was an asset in any circumstance and dampened the analytical orientation of the mind that could be developed right from a young age.

It is on the base of an analytical bend of mind that the power of ‘imagination’ can be built - ‘imagination is more important than knowledge’ is what was famously said by Albert Einstein.

Any work methodology that does not put a premium on mental involvement and ‘forward thinking’ can not serve the best interests of the organisation or corporate body since it passes on the cumulative burden of knowledge-based decisionmaking on the leadership by depriving the latter of a healthy feed back from below.

There is a sudden surge of the idea of using Artificial Intelligence (AI) for enhancing productivity by making technology more ‘smart’ - being ‘smart’ can be defined as adoption of a strategy where output increases ‘per unit of resource’ whether it is money, manpower or time.

Technology makes a human process ‘smart’ and AI further ‘smartens up’ the technological procedures. AI makes it faster to identify what was not working optimally in the system and what could be done to maximise the outcome and its end resultprofitability.

What is more important, it substitutes for a human response in some simpler ways - it can never be the total replacement for human mind that was gifted with ‘discretion’ and the capacity to ‘calibrate’ the response while handling a situation.

Robots that can serve customers in a restaurant, gadgetry at home that can be managed through remote instructions or the invention of driverless cars are all in the news but AI applications are so far centred more usefully, around scanning of multiple data to produce flag points of ‘alert’ and include precise - looking indicators for ‘action’ as far as possible.

In a limited way only, it has a usage for minimising human intervention required for determining the course of action. In essence, AI marks a further advancement of technology-driven processes but does not set a ‘competition’ with human intellect.

In a classical illustration, a major power could have developed a nuclear missile that would be ready to fire off on receiving a ‘trigger’ about the enemy action- developed through use of AI - but it would not like to make this counterresponse totally automatic and would like to retain the element of ‘authorisation’ at a prescribed level.

AI as an advanced technology would be of immense help in upgrading business operations, production centres and work protocols but in matters of ‘policy’ formulation, defence responses and counter-measures in information warfare, the primacy of human decision-making would remain in place.

It is necessary for institutions, organisations and business corporates to check the trend of rising mediocrity on account of the mono-culture created by the preponderance of computer-driven work.

There is faster ‘delivery’ no doubt but the work place was becoming impersonal and everybody’s preoccupation with the allotted task that required little interaction with others within the organisation, was adding to that.

Technology-aided work needed little supervision and this affected the leadership quality of the ‘bosses’ who found it convenient that they did not have to get involved with their people at a personal level and were not called upon to provide ‘participative and nurtural’ guidance to them. This had become pronounced in the era of ‘work from home’ set in by Covid emergency. However, in the US in particular, corporate leadership is already taking steps to get the lower and middle level work force back in office like in the earlier times.

In ultimate analysis, it seemed that the facility of ‘work from home’ was adversely affecting productivity for various reasonsone being the emphasis on ‘mere compliance’ that did not encourage ‘thinking’ about the job in a manner that could suggest organisational improvement or increased output. Covid aftereffects have produced a welcome churning of thoughts on corporate strategy, importance of human interaction in business and the presumed competitive advantage accruing from purely technology-driven human endeavour.

Somewhere, the larger question of whether technology was ‘aiding’ or in fact ‘trying to substitute’ for human play in all fields, is appearing on the horizon and inviting new ideas on future man-machine equation.

In Indian context, however, march of ‘digitisation’ has to be kept up for betterment of governance, upgradation of public services and in particular for the management of law and order that safeguarded the right to equality before law for every citizen over the demands for special treatment by certain groups including minorities. The country fortunately has no dearth of working hands and ‘thinking minds’. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is trying to strengthen the former with technology and encouraging the latter to create their own space through start ups and contribution made, in their spare time, to ways and means of strengthening internal cohesion and national orientation of the people here.

D.C. Pathak (The writer is a former Director of Intelligence Bureau. Views e xpressed are personal)