Criminalization of politics

This was the topic given for an inter-school extempore competition held when I was in the final year at school. Though I wasn’t taking part in that event, I had mentally made certain arguments regarding the same. If I were a participant I thought, I would start my talk, asking the crowd a question – ‘How many of you students sitting before me would like to enter active politics? Those who would, please raise your hand”. The sparse response I assumed I would get, would be the starting point of my attack on the Indian polity, I thought.

I carried with me this tendentious belief, all through these five years that have passed since. I inferred that politics was turning sour because of under-participation from the ‘better’ and the ‘more educated’ strata of the society. I concluded that it is only with active participation from today’s youth, politics in particular, and the country in general could develop and reach the heights, that many have prophesied it would.

My stance on this issue took a new turn after I watched an hour long program on NDTV, where a panel of well known members and political analysts from the media and the polity, were discussing who the next Indian president should be. There was an opinion poll taking place simultaneously, where mainly urban Indians (with access to mobile phones and internet) were making their voices heard (though of not much significance in this particular case of nominating the next president). The poll result clearly showed that the urban Indian had lost faith in the polity and preferred non-politicians like the Infosys’ stalwart Mr. Narayan Murthy and Nobel Laureate Dr. Amartya Sen to take the seat of the highest honour in our country.

It is at this juncture in the program, when the panel and the participating crowd in the discussion were happily playing the blame-game, accusing the politicians of their wrong doings, the editor of the Pioneer newsgroup (who was one of the panelists), made a very valid statement. He asked the public for the number of straightforward and hounourable men in any profession - among journalists, among technocrats, among sportsmen. Since there was not one profession in which all the persons involved could be given a clean chit, he said that that was the case with politics too. He reminded that it was the same society that threw politicians. So unless the mindset of the people changes and the society becomes a morally improved one, not one of the professions, including politics, could get a totally ‘clean’ group of workers.

Though I still believe in my past inferences and the plausible solution I had mentioned about, I had no other option than to wholeheartedly support his point of view.