The year end of 2012 is fast approaching and so is the sinking feeling that is India is heading towards being a ‘Banana Republic’ in the political sense? On the Wikipedia website from a host of definitions the one that appealed to me was that:

“In practice a banana republic is a country operated as a commercial enterprise for private profit effected by collusion between the state and favoured monopolies whereby the profits derived from private exploitation of public lands is private property and the debts incurred are public responsibility.”

Main features of a banana republic reflected on the same website are:

•  “Banana republic is a politically unstable country”
•  “Features a society composed of stratified social classes.”
•  “Ruled by a plutocracy who exploits the national economy by means of a politico-economic oligarchy.”

India in end-2012 may not be the stereotype banana republic commonly referred to small size countries in Central America with endemic corruption. India has sub continental geographical proportions. But India in 2012 is plagued politically and economically in sub-continental proportions by many of the worst political and economic manifestations of a “Banana Republic’.
 
During the second term of the Congress-led Government in power, political corruption has transcended ‘Himalayan Heights’ and has become ‘Deep Rooted as the Deepest Oceans’.

India today also suffers not only from politico-economic collusion but also from politico-bureaucratic collusion and bureaucratic –economic collusion. This stands reflected from the all Spectrum Scams, the CWG Scam, and the Coal-Gate Scams. All of these have touched the steps of India’s political high and mighty.
 
Political instability is very much to the fore where the minority regime in power sustains itself on lifelines thrown by regional outfits who themselves depend on the Government to soft-pedal pending corruption cases against them.
 
India’s descent into a banana republic ignominy cannot be arrested by the present governing dispensation. They are on a ‘political high’ trumpeting that they were elected by the Indian people for five years and give the impression that they could not care less for all the criticism heaped on them currently.
 
The year 2014 is fast approaching when fresh General Elections would be held. Is it not then incumbent on India Great Middle Class to honour the constant exhortations made in my columns that on Election Day they must turn-out in large numbers to vote and reset the distorted electoral arithmetic of captive minority-cum backward classes vote-banks imposed on India’s body-politic.