Politicians are changing parties and stands and giving some reason or the other to justify it. When a politician dumps one leader or party and backs another he had condemned for years, he provides some convoluted logic for doing so.
Is anybody fooledIJ No one. People know it is greed for power and nothing else prodding the acrobatics of affiliations. There is absolutely no principle behind it, no high moral ground.
That’s just one among numerous reasons for people to stop voting for such politicians and reform our democracy. Why do people use their votes to keep shuffling in and out of power politicians and parties that have made a fine art of fooling the electorateIJ Is there something wrong with the electorateIJ It is a common practice to keep declaring in public forums that Indian voters are very mature and discerning. It has almost become sacrosanct to do so. It is sacrilege to question the credentials of voters. But I am going to commit this appalling sacrilege. I am no saint, but I want to say what Jesus Christ said when he was being crucified: “God, forgive them for they do not know what they do.”
Do Indian voters know what they do when they cast their voteIJ Have not people tried out all kinds of parties and politiciansIJ Are people not aware what kind of leaders they have been voting to power election after election after electionIJ Of course, people know who they give power to through their vote. People who crucified Christ knew what they were doing, but they still went ahead and did it. There is something gravely wrong with such people. When I know somebody is a thief and still choose to back him, it can only be because I too am a thief to some extent. Turning against the thief would amount to turning against myself.
If I am a thief and I publicly condemn another thief, I condemn myself too. That becomes too much to handle. So I choose to ignore the fact that I am thief and put up a public facade of honesty that allows me to hound all those I think can expose me in front of the world or in my own eyes and show me who I am. If I am a thief, it will be natural for me to side with other thieves to give power to the best thieves in the land so that we can all continue being thieves.
All through I know who I am and who everybody else is. All through I keep running away from my own reality, my weakness to commit wrong. This is the sacrosanct electorate that can never do any wrong. It is overwhelmingly made of people who are awake and aware but have chosen to ignore and escape the truths they know. There are two parts of this electorate working in tandem to establish disorder as the order of the day in the nation’s democracy and, thereby, in all its activities. For politics sure is the mother of all activity.
One part of the electorate is fairly educated and well-to-do. It is not so much tied by the age-old bonds of religion or caste. It has used its education and work to reach some level of physical and social comfort. But its work has not been totally fair. It has been adulterated by varying degrees of corrupt acts of commission and omission.
It uses its educated smartness to delude itself and others into believing that it has done a fair job of being honest and sincere. It knows the system it works for, the system that has given it the rewards of physical and social comfort, can’t work without being corrupt. It knows it lends its hands to this system to enjoy some benefits in return. It has a stake in the system, spanning all the four estates of our beloved democracy. It has a stake in the corruption of the system, in the fine job of mixing corruption with honesty astutely so that a believable public stand can be made that the system does an honest job of tackling corruption. And this electorate has a stake in keep shuffling power among people who will keep this system and its corruption going.
This system is an extension of the collective ego of people, the collective ‘I, me and mine’ of people. It is made of countless ‘Is’, countless self-interests of people. This system, thus, is basically centred on the selfishness of people. It is based on the capacity of people to think about their own selves, if necessary, at the expense of everything else. This system cannot even dream of ever rising above the confines of the self defined by the physical body and mind of the people who make it. The self-driven physical body gravitates towards higher and higher physical and sensual pleasures and the self-driven mind craves more and more power, prestige, position. The self of the ego goes to any level in its pursuits, and bothers not if any kind of corruption, including support of corruption, happens on the way.
The other part of the electorate is not much different. It is not as educated and well-off as the first part and is much more bound by the ties of tradition, religion and caste. It has a lesser stake in the system that the first part of the electorate dominates. The first part provides its intellect and the second part its physical labour to keep the system going. The second electorate also knows who is who and what is what in the system. The biggest acts of corruption in the system are violations of the spirit of the law of the land committed in the realm of the mind and intellect. The first electorate is much more privy to and actively contributing to this corruption, earning higher rewards of physical comforts and social status.
The first electorate and the system have a stake in keeping the second electorate below the first in terms of confidence, means and education. The higher rewards of the first can only come at the expense of the physical discomfort and lower social status of the second. Doing the 12-hour-a day duty of a guard at a hotel or mopping the floor day in and out of multiple residential apartments is a lot of physical and social discomfort, but somebody has to do these jobs to keep the hotels, apartments and other works of the system going.
The second electorate too has a stake in the system and its corruption. The second is the same in basic intent and content as the first, only less fortunate in being enabled and empowered. Its rewards are lower so it dreams of bigger rewards. It also is marooned in individual egos, all standing for desperate, unrelenting self-interest that can easily go to any blundering extent to fulfil unending cravings. It also votes for the corrupt because its latent or actualised corruptness, a natural outcome of life ruled by the ego, makes it a natural ally of a corrupt system.
That, in brief, is the exalted electorate, the life breath of democracy. That is why politicians can hop in and out of parties and do all kinds of mischief solely for their self-interest, egoistic ambitions and personal glory and still continue unpunished and unquestioned in the system.
amitshekhara@gmail.com