“Idealism is good in politics, but if you are kicked out, who cares!” asserted Maharashtra Dy Chief Minister Fadnavis, adding, “I can’t promise that I do ethical politics 100%.” Finally, it’s official. Politics in India has nothing to do with morality, accountability, and healthy conventions. Taint is the flavour of the new political season. Wherein power and taint go saath-saath.  A sense of de ja vu overwhelms.

The defection by Sharad Pawar’s NCP MLAs led by nephew Ajit Pawar to Shinde’s Shiv Sena-BJP Sarkar last week in Maharashtra exposes that available and willing leaders sell themselves to the highest bidder depending on the price. All, with clinical precision devoid of pretensions: of ‘meeting of minds’, ideology, principles, or personal fondness. And BJP extolled smart political management: money for allurement and use of State machinery for intimidation.

Jog your memory, hadn’t Prime Minister Modi called NCP “National Corrupt Party,” with Enforcement Directorate breathing down Pawar Jr’s and his Ministerial colleagues’ neck recently? Thundered he, “Na mein khata hoon na khane doonga! I will bell the big fat cat of corruption.” Really?

What changed overnight that corrupt NCP leaders have emerged as surf’s safedi ki chamkan compared to their chor brethren who are unfit to rule, leave alone provide good and honest governance? Greed for Power. Whereby they are portrayed, as winners who can commit no sin, will go to any extent to prove (sic) their honesty, and stands cleansed of all guilt and criminality.

It’s not Pawar alone any leader or rival group who till yesterday was a chor and ghooskora but switched to BJP is washed in its “clean” laundromat and comes out smelling of fresh roses, feigning ignorance and playing dumb, blind and deaf about their corrupt misdemeanors. Taint, what are you talking about?  What’s the big deal about it? Remember, an honest man is one who hasn’t been caught!   

Worse, with various types of chameleons leaders one doesn’t know who is sleeping with whom and who is jumping from one bed to another, as friends and enemies are all rolled into one. Patronage, opportunism, and a share of the power pie are the glue that keeps it all together. Indeed, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Confided a Minister, “Hum sab ek hi thaali ke chate-bate hain aur is maryada ke hamam mein nagain hai!  Bihar’s Nitish Kumar till August last was singing paeans of Modi till he switched sides and formed the Government with friend-turned-foe-turned friend Laloo’s RJD. This a repeat of July 2017 when he quit Laloo’s Mahagathbandhan to play footsie with BJP.

2020 stands testimony to brazen horse-trading with Congress’s Jyotiraditya Scindia along with 22 loyalist MLAs joining BJP resulting in Kamal Nath’s Government downfall and coronation of  Shivraj Chauhan as Chief Minister. Ditto in Karnataka 2019 when 15 Congress-JD(S) MLAs switched to BJP, kicked out Kumaraswamy’s Government, and installed Yedurappa’s Sarkar. Notwithstanding, fundamentally violating the democratic principle: Voters’ rights to choose their Governments via the ballot box.

Succinctly, these paper tigers who sell their political soul to the highest bidder in this political nautanki are dubbed smart. Whereby, every Party and its leaders have perfected the art of beguiling its hum zulfs and dushmans with aplomb, saddling us with opportunists and liars. Exposing the disdain with which our netagan holds democracy and voters.

Thereby, exposing politics of the worst kind, cultivating low morality and high greed — and need of the hour. A power-play when personality-oriented malicious vilification seems to have become the hallmark of democracy. Sans shared ideology and mutual objectives. This pithily is aaj ki rajneeti.

Whereby politics has everything to do with acceptability, and little with credibility and public life is all compromises, not principles dripping morality sermons but not practicing it. Wring your hands all you want, but that does not take away from the fact that morality, honesty, and integrity are words non-existent in the political vocabulary.

A fine distinction is drawn between a “politically-motivated” charge and an actual conviction. Such is the intoxicating nasha of power that all conveniently choose to shrug off. Dismissed at best as an aberration and at worst a squeaky knee with which one can live. In this you-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours culture, our polity in their collective conscience willingly abets.

In a milieu where graft and sleaze are India’s creepy-crawly Osama bin Laden which permeates the very core of daily Government functioning ensnaring the country in its vicious tentacles, the temptation to make money is always great, indeed irresistible. In the political brothel of corruption, one may not begrudge our netagan from making money, ostensibly for Party funds or feathering his own nest. That is the prevailing culture.

As long as a leader is part of the Establishment, all wink at his misdemeanors. Alas, so caught up in the verbose of one-upmanship are all that none stops to think and ponder the implications of their actions. The tragedy of it all is that in this winner take-all-fight governance and people go for a toss. Satta batoan aur tamasha dekho! What matters is only the end game: Gaddi.

Questionably, does the electorate want honest politicians and a clean Government? Are there no honest and capable netas? Doesn’t seem so as a “clean politician” sounds like an oxymoron, a breed that no longer exists. Most distressing is that it doesn’t strike any chord anywhere.

Alas, in a chor-chor-mauser-bhai political milieu of you-scratch-my-back- I-yours, our leaders have left it to the “call of conscience” of individual leaders. Happily, all follow the principle of “politics of direct sale”. Appalling, none have time for the gasping and groaning aam aadmi who reels under the onslaught of spiraling prices of vegetables, pulses, and food-grain and sky-rocketing inflation.

Moreover, we demand moral responsibility only when we are short-changed in material goods but choose not to question leader’s moral legitimacy when they normalise violence against citizens. Think. No politician has ever stepped down over the killings of its citizens in targeted mass violence.

In this market model of democracy, it is a misnomer to believe that netas are governed by ideology. Instead, there is a tendency to capture the imagination of the people by creating a spectacle alongside money which makes the clogged, polluted, and corrupt political mare go around.

Importantly, India is today at a moral crossroads. Gone are the days of Gandhi, Nehru, and Patel. The moot point is: Will immorality and taint be allowed to become the bedrock of our Parliamentary democracy? Basically, is it good for democracy to have such people as ministers? When those who are supposed to lead become saboteurs, it is time to call a spade a spade.

Thus, in this game of lies, deceit, and deception, BJP, Congress and regional outfits reflect the emerging truth of today’s India. Power is all. Arguably, one can say this is what democracy is about. In this immoral political desert and barren discourse, no longer can we merely shrug our shoulders and dismiss it as political kalyug.

The challenge lies in overhauling our system of governance whereby voters have to make tough calls. The ‘Conduct of Politics’ necessitates reliability, integrity, credibility, conviction, and courage. There should be no scope for any lingering doubt or suspicion that politics is the last refuge of a scoundrel. As nothing costs a nation more than cheap politicians! —- INFA