No country can prosper where the political class and governance system despise integrity and honesty and viciously hound those who speak truth to power, writes V.S.Pandey
It is very natural for the common citizen to be worried about today’s political situation because the degeneration of politics is making the life of the common people extremely difficult. The situation in our country has deteriorated further and the people are reduced to relying on bribes or “sifarish” even for their legitimate and legal work. Even after 75 years of independence, today, 80 crore people in our country are not in a position to pay for the monthly quota of five kilograms of food grain. Hence the government has to make arrangements to provide them with this basic quota of food grain every month. We also enjoy the dubious distinction of our country ranking very high in the list of corrupt countries. Clearly the politicians who run the country are the ones most responsible for the despicable condition of our people and nation. We need to look into the reasons for this sorry state of affairs dispassionately and with a deep sense of responsibility and urgency.
The architects of our country’s constitution were born out of the freedom movement of our country. They had not only sacrificed everything for the country to get freedom, but they had also suffered the torture of incarceration for years. They had abiding faith in the golden future of India. But we the people of India did not live up to that faith. Our political leaders later acted irresponsibly , succumbed to petty interests , used caste, religion, black money and nefarious means to somehow grab power. These bunch of self-serving leaders turned out to be thoroughly incompetent, corrupt and characterless, contrary to the expectations of our freedom fighters. The generation of freedom fighters who joined electoral politics remained active till the 60-70s.Later on, the mass of pygmy politicians who followed , created a whole new grammar of politics and completely transformed it. New trends like criminalization of politics, politicization of criminals, dominance of family centric political parties, supremacy of ideological opportunistic politics in place of honest politics have in fact completely marginalized every ideal and negated national interest. Now there is brazen naked dance of polluted politics on the national stage.
During the past several decades, we have been witnessing the increasing influence of black money and muscle power in politics , with caste and religion being openly used to win elections. Today in our political system, winning by hook or crook, is the rule of the game of political parties of all hues, red, green, blue, saffron , or any other color. Newer faces which emerged on the political horizon are proving to be the worst – having taken the political jugglery to new lows and are destined to doom both politics and the nation in the coming years, if not checked expeditiously. All saner advice to improve the situation over these decades ,have fallen on deaf ears. Our political system is degenerating rapidly and is dependent on only falsehoods, illicit money, and creating dissensions. Integrity, tolerance, pluralism and virtues are totally excluded from our political land scape. So far there has been no effort to stem this rot.
Sadly ,for several years , due to the prevalent unethical political culture ridden with all kinds of ills , the political class ruling the country and states became increasingly intolerant of people with honesty , courage and guts. The practice of packing the top echelons of government and other important institutions with spineless, compromised and corrupt persons has gone on unabated for too long and now the nation is facing the outcome of these misendeavors. Any one who has observed the functioning of our governance system will vouch for the systematic dismantling of the ethical edifice of governance by the corrupt political class, ably aided and abetted by the largely corrupt bureaucracy who were propped up by the selfsame unethical , self- serving and corrupt politicians. During the past several years, the underlying theme of governance remained the same – if corrupt and pliable you were welcomed and the principled ones were always sidelined. The deleterious effect of this rotten politics is now writ large everywhere. Now everyone is helpless , lost and stuck in the self created morass.
The immense rot accumulated in the political landscape needs to be cleaned up at the earliest. No country can prosper where the political class and governance system despise integrity and honesty and viciously hound those who speak truth to power. Rotten politics has led to rot everywhere in every country which has ever existed on this planet earth- in the past or present. The people in every country have to make the choice to either cleanup the mess or remain mired in it and consequently putrefy with the rotten. History is witness to the singular truth that only those nations survive, thrive and march ahead whose leadership shows vision ,maturity acts honestly and governs with empathy towards its people and takes everyone along irrespective of their caste, religion , colour or ethnicity.
The time has come to cleanse the political system mired in money power, muscle power and an all pervasive divisive and corruption ridden nefarious mindset. Better late than never. We must act now.
(Vijay Shankar Pandey is former Secretary Government of India)
