The political class is getting seduced to high life style, forgetting those who elected them to parliament and state assemblies. Bureaucracy, too, imitates their political masters and hones their expertise in corrupt malpractices…

Jawed Khurshid

‘Politics is the last resort of scoundrel,’ once legendary Lincoln pontificated. Its corrosive impact is felt during cold war era earlier and on various flashpoints on the globe like Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and other less volatile Afro-Asian nations today. However, it’s altogether a different story.

India was once the land of sages, spiritualism and snake charmers. Now the sages seem to have attained nirvana in political feuds. This is true for every religious denomination.  The political maturity exhibited by our leaders during independence era is pathetically found missing now. Every single democratic institution has literally lost its sheen. The economy is in jeopardy; millions are reeling through hunger, malnutrition related disorders, kwashiorkor and unemployment, while our leaders’ ostentatious lifestyle mocks at our helplessness and poverty.

Circa 2004: ‘If we grab power, we will free the state from ninety-eight thousand crore debt,’ said a powerful politico, seducing millions of people of Maharashtra by his baritone voice prior to assembly election then. A decade after that nothing tangible happened. Their ramblings and musings are all meant to keep electorates in good humor.

Many development projects kick-started by the government have promised to rehabilitate the people dislocated by it, but alas! Years after year disappears like snowflakes but no sops reach them. Dushyant Kumar, a poet who died at the age of 32, wrote, ‘Yehan tak aate aate sookh jaatein hain kai nadiyan, hamein maloom hai panee kahan thehra hua hoga’ (Numerous rivers dry up prior to reaching here; we know where the water has stuck). This is the only reason why people have lost faith in government and think twice before handing over their lands to the state.

Like politicians, bureaucrats too are well adept in this art. A professor of political sociology once remarked, ‘you can’t catch them on the spot taking bribes, as you cannot detect when fish drinks water in sea.’ The slew of scams that hit the government since couple of years has a telling sign on economy of the state, which was already diagnosed anemic due to several recessionary factors. And the cruelest aspect is that our politicians have made it a tool to play political one-upmanship!