By D.N. Singh
Politics has no more remained a profession for service to the people and politicians as people’s representatives. Which also negates the established tenet Democracy is by the people, for the people and of the people. The parties may be stationary but those who are parts of it have become a kind of ‘ aya Rams and gaya Rams ‘ kind of stuff.
By their quest for self-service the netas have transformed the tenets of politics into a mere profession to perpetuate a kind of legacy towards self-service, self-enrich and self-aggrandisement for generations. It may appear to be an antithesis to the slogan for service to society by being political leaders, but that is the rock-bottom reality. It has become all the more evident from what went days before the run up to 2019 polls.
Regardless of the party, dissent , rebellion and then exits have become regular these days. It is a tough task to keep track of people leaving parties, it is also a jig-saw puzzle to keep track of leaders jumping from one party to the other. One requires a who’s who kind of fact sheet to know which leader left which party and where did he or she joined.
It all started in the early parts of this month. It was like a stock exchange when leaders behaved like bidders and created flutters in the Biju Janata Dal by their exits one after the other. Almost spiraling in nature, there was a time when it appeared , as if, the party would fall into parts like a house of cards and loyalty being given a dam short-shrift. It took moments hardly to change ideology, role-reversals and who cares for loyalty. Which has become a bloody good alien phenomenon.
Three sitting MPs from the BJD have left the party after being denied a ticket. Instances of BJD type exits are endemic by now. For every political party this syndrome of ideological metamorphosis has become common and too cheap a means to peddle one’s own selling point. Yesterday’s demon becomes today’s template of virtue .
To say the least, it is now unfair to attack the ‘dynasty’ in the Congress when each leader who is denied to contest further , makes it a point that his or her son be given the ticket. You now suddenly find a brigade of youngsters on whom politics being thrust upon. After all a legacy is to be perpetuated.
Not to be unfair with the truth, even leaders of some political parties in their handling of electoral mathematics, subtly preferred personal goal to winnability and dispensed with parity. It has happened in the BJP also and the Congress is no where behind where such cyclic collapse of loyalty is too pervasive.
