Writing about this problem
doesn't make any difference on its state of perpetual apathy. The almost of who
are in the fray are beyond redemption. They all are same under the skin, an
illicit brotherhood to further their common interests.
Ignoring or maintaining a
distance from the epidemic cannot help either. It is heading for a systemic
failure and the best fight back to it can be while being in the System, while
being a part of it.
And so, the fresh thinking and
new entrants with a vow to fight the wrongs in the System are in urgent need.
Sadly, that is not happening.
Reform, there, is still about rhetoric and empty words and even the beginning
of the process, that no one can decide, define or conceptualize, sounds like
daydreaming.
The grip of rotten values and
insensitive politics has spread so deep and wide that it rapidly co-opts almost
of such entrants. Those who still maintain the stand are made ineffective,
cornered or wiped out.
If we look back to gather some
names in the recent past, when the process of deterioration has frighteningly
speeded up, we don’t find any.
But even if we go back into the
history of the post-independence India, we don’t find many names.
All we have is apolitical Vinoba Bhave or social and political icons like Ram
Manohar Lohia or Jayaprakash Narayan.
But continuance of Congress as
the major political force in India,
during and after them, and its sustained rule even after the Emergency of 1970s
tell nothing much has moved in the name of political reforms in the country.
Initial days of post-Emergency period
did give the nation its first non-Congress government but it fell owing to its
own fault lines. Worse, many of its firebrand leaders are prominent politicians
today, comfortably co-opted by the brand of politics that has come to be known
as insensitive, corrupt and increasingly dictatorial, a brand of politics
commonly associated with the Congress party.
Recently, after over three
decades of the days of the Emergency era, we had first genuine hopes for Political
System reform when the country was swept by a huge anti-corruption mass
movement. Though it was urban in nature, its wide base and self-propagating
nature told there could be some leaders from the movement, who if took the
political plunge in future, would be serious players to reform the Indian
politics.
For some time, Arvind Kejriwal or
even Anna Hazare (in spite of his age) looked as probables for the alternative
to today’s politicians. But, the way Kejriwal looked in haste and split with
Anna Hazare to form his political outfit was shadowy.
Now fully in politics, he is yet
to reach out to tell us if he is different. Only time will tell about it but
his ‘could not rise to the occasion’ performance on two of the recent
anti-reform and anti-democratic moves by politicians to scuttle the Supreme
Court decisions on electoral reforms and to dilute the RTI Act, disappoints. There
are clear and pertinent risks of him being co-opted in the future.
Political reforms in country have
lingered on for long. Except for some high points, there has not been much to
talk about. But, at the same time, the need for a political alternative is more
desperate than ever.
And it has to come from within
only, from this rotten System only. This System has to be won from within only.
The need to fight back the rot is more desperate than ever.
BUT HOW? No one can decide or
define it.