Couple of days back, I had seen a current affair update, which suggests a reform in political fund raising citing examples of the spread of scams getting unearthed these days. The Times of India, Hyderabad edition carried an ‘Open Letter from the Youth of India’ addressed to Ms. Sonia Gandhi, constructed by Chetan Bhagat, which was also pointing at the expenses of running a political outfit and suggested a transparent system of funding so that these compulsions for impulsive corruption can be eradicated. More over politics should become an interesting profession for educated/ professional youth to enter into, so that it should compensate the efforts of a politician’s services.
I had mentioned a clear thought on the same ground in one of my earlier articles (Our Pseudo Culture & Politics) in this blog and I had categorically mentioned about the disgusting hypocrisy, we as a society exhibit when it comes to politics & morality! Before blaming all ‘Rajas’ and ‘Sukhrams’, each one of us need to look at ourselves for a self-analysis! We don’t mind bribing anybody for getting through our motives and when it comes to an issue, we will hide all that and criticize the corrupt system in length & breadth!! It is actually still more pseudo show, when it comes to morality…! We don’t mind if anybody does anything unethical with a cover and we will have multi-channel discussions on somebody who got caught in the cross fire of the king makers!! Do you think these Ministers are the only culprits behind any scam? Have you ever heard about the former telecom minister, any time before he was made a minister? Prior to his ministerdom, how many from Tamil Nadu knew that which constituency he represented? I mean to say that these insignificant individuals are only pawns in the hands of many ‘Larger than life’ King Makers!! We as a society will make huge noise over somebody appears with his would be wife and discuss it as if he had done a crime and we would conveniently ignore the facts about many big time ‘immoral rogues’ of tinsel town and those politicians who have multiple wives, when our law terms having multiple partners as illegal! We don’t have a problem…! Why there’s a selected interpretation on such aspects as per our convenience? The answer is simple…we just don't think and the media can trigger and drive this mass euphoria about anything, these days!!
To get rid of the embrace of these series of scams & corruption, we as a society need to get out of our hippocratic thought process and pseudo practices. There should be a reform in the political process by limiting the number of political parties and there should be a legal fund raising process and a practical, contemporary and transparent expenditure policy. These are not rocket science to understand, as it had been successfully implemented in many other countries with robust economies. When we make such a huge hue & cry of the looted money parked in foreign banks and tax havens, we should also realize that parts of these funds re – appear during our elections in ‘black’ formats. As rightly suggested by Chetan Bhagat, we need to be pragmatic about the election expenditure and cannot live in 1970’s expense portfolios and close our eyes to say it is completely dark everywhere!
Every one of us should contribute towards this by correcting our own thoughts and practices to avert the big danger awaiting all of us ahead, if this social beast is not tamed. You witness the sea of changes across the world and with geo-political forces working in tandem that can sweep our nation as well sooner than later! I call upon every politician to understand the danger and act sensible to refine & reform as one can’t fool all the people, all the time!
1 comment:
Every politician is corrupt in India at their own levels and magnitude. However, I would say there are many reason for that. One is the society themselves as we all are part of corruption or power brokering in one or other way. More over, every party looks at people with huge chunks of money (no matter how they earned it!) as candidates who are expected to buy votes and spend left, right and center during extravagant campaigns! Until we install a transparent system of political funding and strict enforcement of practical & reasonable spend limits through social audits and multi level audit processes, we cannot escape from this social evil. As part of this movement, we need to restrict the number of parties also. Janlokpal bill is definitely one huge step towards this and we need to whole heartedly support it. I'm sure no politician will be in favour of this bill with it's true form and spirit suggested by the civil society activists and it will be a huge task to pass it in the parliament unless there's huge mass activism for the same. But, the bill will be only 1% of the work done, if passed and 99% works are left for us to complete with unity.
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