At the cost of the bread of the taxpayer and the migrant worker, the street vendor and the street sweeper, the political parties today, in particular the ruling party, are engrossed in “road-show” populism.
Gerry LoboOFM
Political parties in a Parliamentarian Democracy are meant to maintain checks and balances in the governance of a ruling dispensation. They are necessary and have definite function to fulfill. Truth that sets one free can only be established and executed in an inter-changing discourse among the elected representatives through meaningful debates and counter arguments so that purified from all partisan interests and one-sided favorable judgments, the socio-economic developments of the needs of the human society be carried out constantly and consistently. Unfortunately in a so called ‘democracy’ such as ours in this country, the majoritarian rule undermines truth by exaggerated and unintended promises of abundance doled out in order to retain the masses wherever they find themselves and keep them satisfied with cosmetic and unrealistic manifesto grandly released prior to elections. It may be said that a ‘fascistic’ form of a government, in fact, requires no truth.
Autocracy in the name of democracy is easily declared as truth to which all are forced to submit unquestioned. What has happened and now happening with Putin in Russia, after the fall of sovereign USSR with Gorbachev’s reform policies, lays down in clearest terms that human beings are meant only to be subjects to their beneficent ruler whose supremacy is truth, and that by a humble, slavish submission to his narcissistic projects alone existence is possible. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia is a manifestation of the destruction of an independent democracy gained by a dint of struggle and pain of mortal humans who are ever longing for a home for themselves and for their children. That this state of affairs should be found in a forward moving contemporary world is beyond all imagination. It is insanity. Is humanity only this much? Is there no capacity to move beyond an utterly senseless foolishness for power? This is nothing but a “gladiator” sham, degrading the rightful existence of humans, belittling the higher Power of a Transcendent Divine.
Political parties are not societal segments to fragment the stability and harmony of a society or a country. They are, rather, the formators of democracy, not on the political realm alone but on all other facets of civil society. The truth, speaking and doing, is their moral code, their conscience, their commitment and sacrifice, their imperative task because they are spokespersons for common citizens. It is the will of the people that promotes them to the service of truth which is to be executed through their conscious and constant attention paid in regard to people’s needs – physical, material, social, economical and moral.
Political leaders are conscience keepers and conscience builders, essentially speaking. However, lofty ideals and supreme truth which are their intrinsic shield and breastplate, have been rashly done away with for the sole reason of high positions of public standing, thereby appropriating the will of the people rather than reverently honoring it. Political parties have become power centers of public property, high-ranking posts and are gladiators cheered at their every move. That’s why the mushrooming of parties has become a common phenomenon today. What many have turned out to be are factions in the society, dividing the flow of life and activity by inciting passions in people, ill-becoming of humanity. Many have deliberately devalued their rightful and moral conscience in order to suppress freely any conscientious voice that confronts evil. It suits well with them, unfortunately! The formators of democracy? No, creators of anarchy!
Ever since the present ruling dispensation took over the reins of governance of this country at the centre, the poll frenzied dominant political party has been enjoying incomparable standing in the parliament. From the common experience of people one feels the prevalence of fear psychosis, causing divisions of every kind, from social to economic to religious to moral sphere. The Indian society perhaps, has never before experienced the stark divisions wrought by politicalbig-wigs as conspicuously witnessed in the last eight years. GhulamNabi Azad, the Congress Leader, openly owned the fact, when he stated boldly that: “All political parties, including mine, create a divide in the society.” Any person with some common sense will agree with this statement, because it is a reality. Moreover, the success-ridden Hindutva party, and recently on the basis of the largest number in the Uttar Pradesh election, has been over frenzied to the extent that freedom of speech, the Constitutional Right, has gone to the length of the ‘freedom of hate speech,’ abuse, capable of sparkling violence, displacing the innocent by inordinate ordinances and rule the country with the iron fist.
At the cost of the bread of the tax payer and the migrant worker, the street vendor and the street sweeper, the political parties today, in particular the ruling party, are engrossed in “road-show” populism. This has been the prominent feature these past years, meant not to create communal harmony and good-will among citizens but to exhibit mite and injure the human bond that exists among religions, cultures and languages. One thinks that because power is with the dominant category of political ideology, pomp and pride, arrogance and mite are permissible and non-questionable. What is the difference between the oligarchy of Putin in Russia and the rule of leaders in a democratic independent nation such as ours? The lies that lay hidden about Putin are coming to the lime light during the present crisis between Russia and Ukraine. Will there be a day when such revelations about our present political rulers also come out open?
That the resources of a country, natural ones as well as those resulting from the hard sweat of millions, are spent on imperial and triumphant road-shows is to be lamented and condemned. That a Prime Minister of a country who is the “First Servant” of a Republic acting so showy and stern does not behoove of a leader in a land where only a small percentage are ‘sharks’ leaving the dignified millions to fend for themselves like the little fish in an ocean. The country has never seen Public Servants appearing in this manner. Today it has become a normal affair, sadly enough. This is a kind of saturated propaganda by the political parties on public screens and on digital media, intended not for unity but for division. The TMC Leader, MahuaMoitra, in her intervention in the Parliament on March 22, 2022, had the courage to state that the present government “has turned Parliament into Rome’s Coliseum when the Prime Minister enters, like a gladiator to the chants of ‘Modi, Modi.’” The same Ms. Moitra, without exaggeration recalls the words of later Prime Minister, A.B.Vajpayee which he uttered in the Parliament in 1972 in the context of a majoritarian government: “Is this situation not fraught with dangerous possibility of one individual getting established as a dictator?” What an irony!
Contemporarily the political parties have lost all direction, with the exception of one or two who are trying to maintain principles of polity in the country. The primary aim has been to rob “violently” the good will of the electors by dividing them, by injecting fear in them and woo them with ‘jam and butter’ hand-outs simultaneously. A disciplined, well meant, ethically healthy and consistently conscientious mind among political leaders is far from reality, but certainly wanting, if the tenets of our Constitutions are to be fulfilled. When truth is evaded by a mere lip-service to the principles laid down in the Constitutions, what results is nothing but dis-integration. Economic or technological advances, though essential, will remain peripheral satisfying only the physical hunger, but leaving the soul in distress.
The Formators of Democracy need to question their conscience before the benevolent will of those who promote them as voice of the voiceless. Gladiators are required for the Roman Colosseum, whereas the political servants are required to preserve the principles and practice of democracy – a government of the people, with the people and by the people!
∎
