The term ‘politics’ originally referred to the ‘art or science of governance’. Politics being a public matter was to be insulated from isolated individuals and instead stress on groups and consensus. But since it still rested on fallible, fragile and fickle humans, politics gradually became less related to governance and more about managing and manoeuvring. It is today the art of the possible wherein anything goes and ends make even foul means sacred.
That, along with the prospect of unlimited power and abundant profit for the practitioners, is quite a dicey invitation to the unscrupulous. With punditry and probity having been expelled from public life, politics is now a great leveller, putting a profound ideologue on par with a petty idiot or a sundry scoundrel seeming no different from a self-styled honest man. For, on the political scale they are all the same self-seeking, stuffed, small men, out to make hay while the sun shines. Indeed, politics today is synonymous with the politician with not a shred of the original loftiness left. Of course, one can invent a new word to define the art of governance, but trust the political tribe to sully that too as any deed is only as good as the doer. In any case, the problem is not one of semantics. It is about sanity!
The pervasive presence as also the paralysing effects of this parasite called politics is on parade all over India. The art of the possible and its practitioners have together made life impossible for everyone. Even a few decades back, there were many areas of national life that remained untouched by politics or a politician. Not anymore. Not a sector in the country and not a cell in our self has escaped the evil eye of the vile politico! They are no longer content with bribes; they want to take over our businesses and livelihoods. All they survey is theirs. They straddle our psyche and surroundings like a dark shadow. But worse is the contrast in interests of what should actually be a reciprocal relationship. The guardians have turned tormentors. Our increasing dependence on them has instead made them more indifferent and insensitive. All our crises are opportunities for them. Yes, we do have the vote; but they still own the vote banks!
The disastrous disconnect is total. People’s problems and politicians’ priorities are completely at cross-purposes. Nothing amplifies this pathetic picture than the present. Take the evergreen corruption issue. As suspected by some and expected by most, the rulers have no intention of bringing any Lokpal Bill in the winter session of Parli, a promise that was clearly vague even when it was made. Since the Cong intent is to upstage the activists and not uproot corruption, and in the process buy time till the Swiss billions are buried elsewhere, the party has suddenly floated the idea of a separate Constitutional authority, like the Election Commission, and credited the same to Rahul’s bright brain. The party might even christen it Rahul Commission against Corruption, incidentally an apt contradiction in terms. So, as the party and the pretender walk away with having ‘eradicated’ corruption thus, the people wonder why these champions themselves are still not in jail! And also guessing if the anti-corruption outfit itself would need greasing to move!
Every child born today is sensitised to corruption even before the umbilical cord is cut. Really, the culture of bribery is genetically transmitted so that immunity is inbuilt. A modern Indian already asks ‘how much’ rather than screaming ‘what’ when asked to pay on the sly. Any indignation is only about the ruling rates. Such being the levels of awareness and conditioning, it is strange why BJP’s LKA has embarked on his familiar yatra to familiarise the people on the very familiar corruption prevailing all over India. Clearly, this outdated BJP veteran, who has more decades to look back than forward, seems certain that in the current milieu corruption is the right rath that will take him to where his sights are actually set: Capital. And just as the Ram rath helped coronate LKA in Delhi, even as Rama himself remained exiled from Ayodhya, trust corruption to fall on the roadside once the rider reaches the destination. And to think that this yatra politics is not just against the rulers but also to ride roughshod over some of his own ambitious colleagues makes it even more sickening. But, pray, if yatras can put paid to bribery why is it still thriving when millions of yatris are always crisscrossing the country at any time?
But politics over corruption is as endemic and enduring as corruption itself. Look at the other flares alight all over the nation. Telangana, for one, is a direct offshoot of Cong politics, ably aided by regional charlatans out to exploit poverty and isolation. Here too the people themselves are the least and the last in the loop as the various interest groups, mostly elite prime time pundits, carve out Andhra Pradesh according to their whims as if it were a cake on the plate. The political games have been played for too long and the fair winds seem to have passed. All sides have now climbed high walls and pushed away the ladders. Trust the T-issue to be truly tectonic. But with coal stocks stuck and the prospect of movement through the middle of India becoming impossible, a national power breakdown looks imminent. The politics over Koodankulam is another case in point. The flip-flops of the various political parties would put kollywood stuntmen to shame. After twenty years and several millions of public money, this nuclear power plant is yet to light a single bulb. And now all this. We know power corrupts politicos. But here politics is corrupting power.
So, granted, politics has despoiled all good things of life. And this poison is stuck in our throats. But politics has also not spared scams and scamsters. Gone are the days when a single party like Cong could get away as the sole looter. A very dharmic coalition politics has ensured that scams are democratised and dispersed. Talk of checks and balances in the system. Of course, that also explains why Rs 64 crs zoomed to Rs 1.76 lakh crs, give or take a few thousands, in just twenty-five years. More mouths to feed and even more to keep shut!
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