Need of the Hour Need of the Hour

The Indian politician is showing no signs of mindset reform despite the kind of words the public had used to condemn him in the aftermath of Mumbai 26/11. That public memory is short, has been taken for granted. The politician knows he can take many a poor, illiterate and backward soul for a ride; after all, he has developed hoodwinking methodologies into a fine art. However, there are exceptions, but so few and far between are they that they do not matter at all. A vast majority of our elected representatives still live in a warped world, with their feudal mindset refusing to evolve with time — which is of course a choice because all of them choose to behave like kings, and not like servants of their real masters (the people who elect them) in a democracy, as they are in politics not to serve anyone but themselves. Add to all this both criminalization of politics and politicization of crime. No wonder, the rowdyism witnessed in Parliament or State Assemblies does not surprise anyone any more. But should the people watch the ugly show stoically, as they are doing now, as if there is no relation between them and the conduct of their leaders? It is an instructive augury, for the crude and insensitive politician to mend his ways, that a section of people has turned activist. But unless there is an overwhelming outpouring of a democratically charged people into the streets to protest the political rot, it will keep sustaining. The people must call their elected representatives back to ask them a whole gamut of inconvenient questions. THE SENTINEL