Samikhsya Bureau
It grows to be a regular feature in the headlines that in our temple of democracy we have this or that number of parliamentarians with criminal records. Surely, such catchy headlines interest a reader who is as helpless as the system that prevails in our democratic structure. And now a time has come when such revelations hardly stir any conscious. ‘ Chalta hai’ is what in which such scruples get buried and it goes on.
A report by the Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) has come out to inform us that 233 elected Lok sabha MPs out of 539 elected have criminal cases against them. The information that were obtained had come through the declarations made by the winners.
The people read such reports and few react talking to the man next door and a majority give it a damn like, at any other such routine stuff from the power corridors.
While they hardly or never realise that they were their creations!
Going by the political wisdom that we live with, if we elect a man who is criminally charged or an economic offender or a thieve, then we are not mere voters but accomplices.
Be it in a state assembly or in the parliament, now it is clear that we not only take such revelations as boring stuff, but allow a huge decline of value in politics and the delivery.
Many may not agree that the politics of the day is in a bad way regardless of the fact who rules in a state or at the Centre. There is no denying that politics is getting decadent and people have developed a habit to live with that unless it affects them personally.
The agencies like ADR or the other election watch agencies get reduced to seasonal appearances in televisions unrolling the data sheets those go virtually unheeded.
And the media, one rarely comes across serious debates on crminalisation in politics and it keeps glossing over the obvious. Three days after the results the media coverage remains more engaged with swearing in venues and timings or the series visits of Narendra Modi to this temple or that temple, this town or that city followed by discourses etc.
The deadly fire incident that has claimed 22 lives of children in Surat was conveniently tucked down to the lower rungs of coverage. That tragic incident, perhaps, revealed the mental poverty of the national media and politics got itself promoted.
We have reached a point from where the process seems irreversible!
