The other day I was watching a Malayalam TV channel news where the media was beaming the clippings of two lower level political functionaries in a verbal duel in front of an office which is to be presumed as some office of a university located in Kerala. I do not know these two men. One was in his late forties or fifties while the other was a handsome youth in his mid thirties. The former appeared to be a seasoned professional politician while the latter bore a typical look of a much pampered son of any rich business man of Kerala.
Apparently they belonged to the same political party and they were in that verbal duel that appeared to be maturing into a physical duel any time. Perhaps it did. But the media fellows censored the audio and the latter developments.
I could not get much of what the news. But this is what I could make up. There is an ongoing election to the Syndicate of the university which is a kind of democratic government of the university. These two were apparently candidates for getting elected to the syndicate and were too eager to win those 'offices of profit'. Both were claiming to be the official candidates of the party they represented. Perhaps their much experienced superior political bosses played a trick on them! They might have created a situation for these two contenders to fight the duel first to establish their might! I really do not know.
But one thing got clear to me. Democracy is no more a field of public service in India ( I have no idea about other countries). Democracy is all about capturing offices of profits by hoodwinking the public. Once the offices of profits are taken under possession by winning the elections or by getting nominated to it with the patronage of senior elected representatives, those offices could well be used for making profits. The only requirement is to do the profit making acts in the most secret manner as possible. This might be because the fundamental building tool of democratic system is the secret ballot!
Those in professional politics would never agree to this. They keep telling that they are humble servants of the people who are there only to serve the people with all their might. They are selfless people who are sacrificing their good lives for serving the rest of the not-so-able people to provide them the best public administration and governance. If they are not there, the society would be doomed!
Perhaps they are right. We need some people to take up those offices.We need some supervisors who are to oversee the work of our civil servants. We need our own representatives for that to ensure our paid servants doing the work properly as per our liking. That is how we have evolved to make the democratic system as the most suited after finding all other systems of the olden days not so good.
We thought there would be shortage of people to take up these voluntary work of service on our behalf. In that case, it would have been easy for us. But alas! We are surprised by what we have been experiencing. There are more and more people among us to take up the high responsibilities for us. That gave us the choice of exercising our voting rights to elect those whom we thought as the best.
But our problems began when those seeking to serve us have become professional vote seekers and professional service manipulators whom we call as politicians. We have accepted the dictum: In politics, war and love every thing is acceptable. We did not want to elaborate it. But we accepted that these are those areas where morality has no place.
So morality has no place in politics. Then should we be concerned about falling morality in politics? Or, is it that we are really not concerned, but these media fellows are making some drama just to entertain us? After all they need to create and produce entertainment for us by making up news and audiovisuals that keep tickling our senses. The media is not particularly concerned with falling morality of our politics. Politics, acting, mimicry, sports and women are all the same for them! They are only interested in keeping their viewer ratings and incomes. They are also profit oriented professionals, after all.
If we conclude this way, what the much experienced Kerala Chief Minister told the media recently make some sense. He was replying to the media questions about the higher secondary education politics built up around large potentials of money making in his own state.
Yes, what is so big about all these? Are these any worrisome things? Who doesn't know that state politics is essentially built up on the invisible potentials of educracy, boozocracy and transpocracy? It is not so easy for those weak in arithmetic and business to understand the big potentials of education, liquor and transport! It is better that we all keep quite and do not talk about things that are too conventional.
Instead let us talk about much bigger issues. Let us talk about the prospects of China overtaking America in the 2050's. Let us talk about global warming. Let us talk about winning Cricket in London. There are so many such important issues to talk about endlessly.
Yet, I can't help the pondering of my inner consciousness. Is democracy for the purpose of getting some people to occupy all our offices of profit alone? When our royals of the past, whom our ancestors had selected for being in the office of profit for generations, crossed the limits, we had swept them away and discarded them. That had happened even to those who clung to their respective offices of profit and began exploiting us by threatening and terrorizing us.
How long we will be tolerating our neo professional politicians of our modern democratic systems who occupy the offices of profits and do nothing to solve our problems, but keep using those offices for their own pleasure and benefits?
Would it be necessary for us to device another -cracy in the future?
very apt.....
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