"Congressmen are not sufficiently interested in constructive work; we must recognize the fact that social order of our dreams cannot come through the congress party of today.....There is so much corruption today, that it frightens me. Everybody wants to carry so many votes in his pocket because votes give power"
This is not a current statement by an Opposition leader or Anna Hazare. It was by Mahatma Gandhi, sometime in Nov 1947 (Source: The Life of Mahatma Gandhi by Louis Fischer)
His limited experience told him that legislators and judges were too close to the Govt machinery of power to check and balance the executive ; only those outside the Govt, he contended , could check and balance those in Govt.
How can it be done ? He goes on in his address to a conference of Constructive Workers (the name for Civil Society in those days)" Under adult suffrage, if we are worth our salt, we should have such a hold on people that whomsoever we choose would be returned...."
He visualized a regular dialogue between people in power and the "Group of Constructive Workers". He had even scheduled a meeting to take place in March 1948 at Sevagram. The meeting actually took place , with President Rajendra Prasad , Prime minister Nehru and Maulana Azad from the Goverment , and the Constructive Workers Group led by Vinobha Bhave and comprising of Jayaprakash Narayan, the economic thinker JC Kumarappa, the scholar and reformer Kakasaheb Kalelkar, the teacher Ashadevi Aryanayakam, the balladeer Tukdoji Maharaj, the expert on tribal affairs AV Thakkar, the intrepid rescuer of abducted women during Partition, Mridula Sarabhai, the Gandhian leader from Andhra, Konda Venkatappaiya, the khadi pioneer, Srikrishnadas Jaju.
There is an account of the meeting narrated by none other than Mahatma Gandhi's grandson Shri Gopal Krishna Gandhi in Hindustan Times.
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