Need For a Paradigm Shift in Politics

The history of modern political systems is largely a global evolution towards democracy. That is why democratic systems are generally regarded as the most legitimate and ethically fair form of government. More fundamentally, democracy lets people speak their minds and shape their own and their children’s futures.

Commonly, in any two party or multi party democratic system of government, one of the political parties, which constitutes the majority, is generally called ‘Ruling Party’ that holds the authority, whereas the other major party is known as ‘The Opposition’. This nomenclature, it may be pointed out, un-necessarily generates many wrong attitudes in the minds of a large number of people. The ruling party, because of this terminology ,becomes conscious, or gets reminded of its being in control of the levers of powers and authority whereas the other parties consider that their major role now is to just oppose the ruling party.

Both these attitudes together build up an atmosphere in which one finds more of conflict, confrontation or criticism and lack of co-operation between the two sides. In the process, the spirit of brotherhood and love and the goal of welfare of the whole society is lost and most of the human energy and endeavour is spent for the fulfillment of narrower interests. In this atmosphere, each party tries to prove itself better and, in this attempt, denounces the other. This leads also, in many cases, to the tendency of non-cooperation in certain areas of work.

One also finds that, in countries where a republic has the name of a particular religion included in its nomenclature, there its nomenclature and its policies generate prejudice, partiality and attitude of unequal treatment towards those who profess religion different from the State-religion. And, where there is Military Rule, or legalised military dictatorship, there the stress is on the rule of the brute force.To be brief, one finds that, even though the constitution of many countries speaks of their commitment to justice, equality, fraternal feelings, freedom, human rights and public welfare, yet very many systems have in-built tendency to bring about one or the other kind of negative traits which are opposite to what the declared objectives are! It is, therefore, time that social scientists, constitutional experts, political theorists and leaders and experts on values make an endeavour to arrive at a system that generates cooperation, goodwill, love and brotherhood and caters to the wider interests of the whole society