Moments of crisis always bring the best out of a nation, army or a person. When a nation faces crisis, citizens close ranks obliterating the caste, creed and religious divide. When an army faces war, soldiers close ranks and fight till the last. However, when a government plunges into crisis with its survival at stake, politicians show their true colours.
Crisis has befallen the UPA government, which will face the survival test on July 22. Till then, we all are spectators to a unashamed display of lust and bargaining in the political circus.
At the drop of a hint about need of support, it brings forth in MPs an inborn trait of keeping suitors guessing. Their expertise in demanding their pound of flesh — both politically and financially — has been finetuned since the JMM bribery scam tainted the 1993 trust vote victory by the Congress government led by P V Narasimha Rao.
What role were the MPs expected to play in independent India? Dr B R Ambedkar, in his speech marking the closing of the Constituent Assembly in November 1949, had expressed apprehensions about misconduct of politicians and the grave danger that would pose to a young democracy. He wanted the political parties, endeavouring to lead India towards a robust democracy, to first sow the seeds of intra-party democracy to shake off the lurking danger of dictatorship within the party.
He had said ’bhakti’ or hero worship, as prevalent in Indian politics, was unparalleled in any other country. "Bhakti in religion may be a road to salvation of the soul. But in politics, bhakti or hero worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship," he had warned.
Neither Congress, BJP, BSP, SP nor the regional parties and to a certain extent the Left have escaped the influence of the ‘bhakti’ concept of politics.
Is this the reason for today’s state of affairs where the stocks of politicians in the political market are high, but very low in the hearts and minds of the people?
Ambedkar no doubt championed the cause of ’dalits’ but never forgot to mention the equal weightage that the economically downtrodden deserved. He wanted politicians to strive for removal of social and economic inequalities and had warned that failure to do so would imperil democracy.
"How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting political democracy in peril," he had warned. The path towards the exalted platform of social equality has been muddied by the rush to corner votes by first dividing it on caste lines. Social affirmative action has been reduced to a mere ritual of fattening the list of castes, which alone would get reservation in jobs and admissions to central educational institutions.
There appears no one who is ready to seriously stand up for the impoverished lot, despite the Supreme Court dropping hints about it in its recent judgment okaying 27% OBC reservation in admissions to central educational institutions. Why has politics, which common men increasingly perceive as devoid of ethics, come to such a sorry state. The concluding part of Ambedkar’s speech provides an insight.
"Independence is no doubt a matter of joy. But let us not forget that this independence has thrown on us greater responsibilities. By independence, we have lost the excuse of blaming the British for anything going wrong. If hereafter things go wrong, we will have nobody to blame except ourselves. There is a greater danger of things going wrong. Times are fast changing," he had said.
Despite the strides by India, things have actually gone wrong, especially in politics. Instead of accepting the blame, the politicians or those at the helm of affairs have always found the ’foreign hand’, ’communal forces’, ’pseudo-secular forces’, ’Manuvadi forces’ or ’imperialist forces’ handy to point fingers at.
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