Politics: The Institutionalized and Constitutionalised System of Plunder, Injustice and Exploitation

It is about politics, the necessary evil for the contemporary world. Before we discuss the political ramifications for this politicized word, let us go back in time to take a look at the roots of the tree of authority that holds the thriving tree of politics in the modern times. Well it started with absolute monarchies.

It has been the supreme irony of our so called ‘civilized fate’ that try as hard as we can manage, we cannot stop the pyramid type, hierarchical and classified pattern of the social set up. In a pyramid social formation, the higher the class, the lower the weight on its shoulders, and higher the weight on the lower ones constituting the base. In the beginning we had the pointed peak of the social pyramid represented by the unrestrained, unchecked, all powerful potentate, the King, with all his weight on all below, and no weight on his shoulder at all except the light hallo of divinity falling on his crowned head. The crown just acted as a paperweight holding the paper sheaf wherein endless lines of unlimited authority decided the fate of those below. Sometimes the winds did ruffle the edges around the margin, but the sheaf as such was always safe; the centre of gravity exactly falling in its middle in the form of divine rights. Safely tucked under the big stone of cosmic proportions, the papery revolt just could not send even a single tremor across the book of divine rights.

Later, as the civilization unfolded a bit more, absolute monarchies were either blown off the top, or some checks and balances were put in the path of all powerful authority in the form of some constitutional provisions like elected representatives trying to bolster the principles intended for the emancipation of the lowest layers in the pyramid. (Times have more or less weathered the massive crown heads of monarchies and we are left with a few residual, beaten crags struggling in low relief with beaten joints and chips flying away attacked by the rasping desert winds of the popular unrest.)

Will we be ever able to wipe out the successive upper plateaus of exploitation (as the denuded pyramid comes lower, having lost its upper layers, the slag sliding down the sides and slopes to reach a one common uniform layer of everybody’s authority and thus none’s authority)? Under such a scenario, all authority denuded and spread equally among the masses on a uniform plain, will self responsibility allow things to function in all empowered citizenry? Will we function as expected and idealized? Well, answers to these questions lie in future’s womb. It depends on the extent to which the free citizens become self-responsible in a not so free world governed and managed by increasing mechanisations at the individual, social, institutional and governmental levels.  

Passing through successive layers of exploitation in the pyramid, we reach our very own broadly cut plateau at the top involving numerous players—legislature, executive, judiciary, bureaucracy, capitalists, criminals, religioners—our present political system at the top now. Times have eroded the pyramid and left this broader plateau at the top after cutting down the pinpointed head of absolute monarchy. Here all the evils of the former pointed absolutism have been handed over to a broader section of players. The dirt of absolutism has been raked up to be spread among the progenies of absolutism. The ‘will to power’ has sired numerous little crown-heads who try to convince the lower layers that this facelift is meant to ensure the equal rights for the masses. So here we land up with the grandchildren of absolutism, i.e., politics and its big, broad, legally secured crown of authority (which by the way is very safe given its broad supportive rim of constitutionality). Presently, politicians rule at the flat top of this denuding pyramid. Murkily spread over this vast pedestal of authority—their authority constitutionalised—suitably served and aided by the so call ‘influential class’, it now wears the ruling crown, a multi-headed monster, the great scion of absolute monarchy, changed with changing times, in its new avatar. What has but not changed is the will to exploit and self-serve to survive. Why not? After all, it carries the same blood in its authoritative veins like its grandfather, the absolute, all powerful King.

Earlier during the days of absolutism, it worked with impunity and through blatant dispensation of whatever it required to keep its clutch hold on the lesser mortals, now it does through the subtle art of politics, through ‘siyasat’. The long and windy corridors of political hypnotizers echo with lispy conspiratorial whispers; of suppression, secrecy, connivance, plot hatching and what not. Under the monarchy, the despotic game was limited to the royal lineage and their chieftains, now the crown is up for grabs by anyone interested. The only eligibility is the ‘will to power’. In its multitudinous aspect, the fight for little-little crowns up for grabs on the plateau: for legislature, for executive, for judiciary, etc. The rules of the battle in this vast battle ground are solidly fixed up in the constitution book. Rule are but rules, mere words noted down in hypothetical conjectures in the books. These cannot come to life and fight for their sanctity and protection if faced with blatant violations. Since brains are developing even faster for any law, for every rule there in the book, we delve deeper into our creative self to contrive bypasses and short-cuts to either escape their feeble dragnet or even poke our noses at them after judiciously cutting the netting. Our present set of power holders, the politicians, practically, suitably and efficiently manages the game. They munch the meat of authority and throw bones to their cronies, bureaucrats, businessmen and criminals. The unchecked orgy earlier perpetrated by a single monarch, is now enjoyed by a faceless many-bodied class, the politicians.

In all its forms, democracy is considered to be a religion drawing its inspiration and authority from the scriptures of the constitution. A holy book, but, is just a holy book. If not in full letter, but in spirit at least we easily violate the pious injunctions. Apart from these pious injunctions, what happens in reality is an open secret. Except for a few big, mighty words, constitutions are amended to suit the latest political masters’ present day growth prospects. See beyond the superficiality of the decked up bride of democracy coquettishly bragging the independence and autonomy of its various arms, you will see that the politico-bureaucratic-judicial-executive machinery is explicitly or implicitly, directly or indirectly, ultimately mastered and pulled along by the modern monarchs, the politicians. Take for example the bureaucracy, once considered the steel frame of the British Raj, it has now become feeble meshed cage with rusty, breaking wires and gaping holes. All of us know the fate of a bureaucrat if instead of becoming a hyena chucking up the leftover of plunder by some politician, he becomes just a ‘grass eating vegetarian cow’ honestly following the principles and rules of his service book. He is spotted like a black sheep in the easygoing white flock. Harassment and punishment postings ensure that an official of the same cadre and experience can be made a meat-eating hero or a famished zero by the lion, the politician. It’s a clear choice. Either become a steely, profiting arm of a politician or be ready to be thrown in dustbin corners of the bureaucratic corridors. All of us know how state level bureaucracy is selected! Corruption is constitutionally embedded. State Public Service Commissions are just handpicked bodies of the state monarch, the Chief Minister. Literally everybody knows how almost 100% manipulations go hand in glove with the state’s ruling politicians. Manipulations are simplest of things at all the stages of examination. If someone just pushes ahead in prelims and mains stages of the examination, the all powerful boards have powers to undo all the hard work and marks gap between the highest and lowest qualifiers during the farcical personality test. So the prospective provincial civil servants easily start their innings as political loyalists. To muster up high-end pay, perks and profits, they operate like loyal palace grooms discharging functions assigned by the political patron.

Without making much of noise against the plunder of public money, severe breach of laws, gross insufficiency of public morals and rules, the judiciary too toes the line. Directly or indirectly the political masters influence the functioning of justice dispensation. The dark corridors leading to the appointments and elevation to higher chairs in High Courts and Supreme Court definitely allows the politicians to hold ears of ambitious judges. Judiciary is allowed a free play by politicians in cases where only masses are involved. In such cases the judges can afford to have some discretion, be honest if they want and take money from one of the parties through the lawyers (like they generally do) to tilt the hammer of justice this or that way. But in cases where the ruling government’s interests are at stake directly, no judge can afford to feel the pinch at his bottom if he decides to be driven by integrity and honesty. Once in a blue moon, some odd case is deliberately picked up where the court gives verdict against the government and it is put on the front pages in media. It is just to keep people believing in the assumption that judiciary is fair. Poor masses do not know, under one such case highlighted, thousands of other cases where judiciary toes the political line go unnoticed. One hammer of dissent against government is at the cost of hundreds of political facilitations by condescending judges to appease political masters. Led by the instinct of self preservation most of the judges do not prefer to rub shoulders against the system. In this clattering noise of self gratification, the voice of justice gets buried in the stampede towards profits and promotions.

Politicians as the masters of the public and private economy are offered oblations by the business class. We have the biggest industrial houses of the country pouring unaccounted and illegitimate money in political pockets. Since it is a fight to further one’s own interests as far as possible, using any means possible depending on one’s own skills and shrewdness—it is just as per Darwin’s principle of natural and social selection—we come across the cut throat competition in the social jungle having its social lions and social deer. So we have the people who would never think twice before striking others’ head to boost their own chances. Of all the scoundrels, politics draws the fittest scoundrels who form a nexus among various scions of exploitative elements. Those who are left out of this fold become the poor, dispossessed, suffering underclass.

In the social jungle, the principles of raw nature like ‘the superior kills the inferior’, ‘might is right’, ‘stronger meat chucks the easy meat’ are prevalent in humane, implicit form. Whole façade of civilization has been created to screen the blind passions and intentions to kill and decimate each other. Instead of killing and exterminating each other, the human version is through cheating, forgery and outwitting. A lion is at the peak of natural pyramid and food chain, eating away the last interests and easy meat that successively struggle at the lower hierarchies to emerge victor at the next stage to be gobbled up by the more potent, powerful and skilled ones at the next stage. In social jungle’s pyramid, the apex of our food chain of interests is occupied by the social lion, the politician. Every lower interest at the lower hierarchies is finally destined to be deposited and digested expertly in its guts.

Politicians, thus, are the new age monarchs who are able to outsmart fellow human beings both at the individual and mass levels. Where will we end up with passage of time? Will the progenies of exploitation change in future? Or the politicians will even allow their own progenies to change them? Politicians seem invincible, not to be defeated by any change!