Eminent Citizens for Swaraj

The argument that Democracy is foreign to India cannot be alleged by any well informed person. Maine and other historians recognise the fact that Democratic Institutions are essentially Aryan, and spread from India to Europe with the immigration of Aryan peoples. Panchayats, the "village republics," had been the most stable institution of India, and only vanished during the last century under the pressure of the East India Company's domination.

"We, the people of this Dharam Parayan country, did not get true freedom as envisaged by Mahatma Gandhi and others, who dream for Swaraj. They wanted to decentralize the power/governance to the pre-British India. They wanted to revive the local self governance as it existed for many centuries in India. There are references of more than 2500 years back during Siddharth Gautam (who attained Bodhi and became Gautama, the Buddha).

Unfortunately, the Constitution of Independent India (adopted on 26th January 1950) also centres around the British form of Governance. It  is believed that the brief/mandate given to the committee, who was drafting the  Constitution was to maintain centre’s predominance.

Therefore, people of India need liberation from the current form of Governance, where even the elected representatives of people (other than the ministers) do not have direct executive powers. This results in slavery to bureaucracy. All ills like Corruption, leakages of development funds and so on are results of this. We need to give people the power and authority to decide on issues which are concerning with their day to day life. That will only make true swaraj. Otherwise the independence that we got 63 years back is academic. It has changed the color of the skin of both legislators and executives without giving real independence to the people.

I have experienced this even in business. The businesses managed through central command structure do not do as well as those which are decentralized ".

by Subhash Chandra, Founder and Chairman of Essel group of companies and Zee Network

"Its time to look at fundamental issue like our form of governance. Why isn't the average citizen able to get things done? What use is it to call ourselves a democracy when the average citizen is virtually helpless when it comes to getting his everyday needs being met? I am fully supportive of people's participation in governance or sahbhagi. We are lacking a mindset in government where the citizen is a sahbhagi. Its time we reformed our approach to governance and adopted a structure of local self governance where citizens across the country can be in charge of their own destiny while the government is the facilitator"

Mrs Indu Jain, Chairperson of Times Group of Publications and President of Times Foundatio

FOLLOW THE MOVEMENT

Our Movement for local self-governance goes by many names (Swaraj Andolan, Lokraj Andolan, Swaraj Abhiyan, Lokraj Abhiyan, Sahabhagi) but the intent is one and the same. This movement is about bringing people together to demand, persuade and force both state and central governments to provide the necessary legislative and constitutional framework to give Swaraj to the people