Politics: The Unsetting Sun and the Endless Cacophony of Democracy

 **18 June 2003**

The less we say of it, the better it is for us as well as those around us.

But it being the defining phenomenon of the age, voluntarily, involuntarily, willingly, unwillingly, we are most often led into discussing it quite hotly.

We can hardly avoid it because if we think that some aspect of our daily life has been left untouched by politics, then we are in for a shock.

It is the shining star of the day.

Its glittering rays reach every nook and corner of our physical, mental and social being. It is now percolating deep into our souls to reshape and redefine us, to turn us into political animals, almost.

There were times when cooks in the political kitchen heated their ovens at election times, mostly parliamentary and assembly ones.

But those days are too distant and seem impossible, when political cacophony did not blare day in and day out.

Now the sun does not set over the face of the country without witnessing some political drama in a part of it.

Political hatchings have been going on blatantly, mindlessly.

Now there are elections for so many varieties of reasons, institutions and organisations that it would be futile to look for another trade with such widely circulating arms.

Corporate elections, panchayat elections, elections for the office-bearers of aided and private institutions like schools and colleges, and the other more conventional ones at the higher level.

In the fire and fury of June, political parties and their distinguished leaders are doing everything to drag the highest political seat of the President into the palestra, to make their presence felt in the arena.

The Supreme Head of the State enjoys an apolitical, impartial status, but when the voters for this august office are bursting with so many political fires and passions, then how can the seat and the person on it avoid feeling the political heat?

Thus it has been going on in June.

The Honourable President seems to be struggling to fulfil the term, and through biased, shameless, explicit hurling of one's own ideology, others have rushed into the fray.

Looking at their petty squabbling, which is all the bickering of weird combatants in municipal elections, one is forced to think:

Is democracy creating a glut of ambitions to make it even worse than autocracy?

For getting into the management committees of educational institutions, people now spend lakhs as entrance fees.

So to ask them not to loot the resources afterwards would be injustice to them as well as the laws of economy!