By D.N.Singh
As the nation heads towards the final phase of the election process, the trails of heat and dust generated by the substandard trading of dialogues among the political parties is not only demeaning the civilities in politics but it sets a trend so unhygienic for the posterity.
More one makes the attack on the opponent spicy, more it becomes acceptable is what the political parties assume. There are efforts to coin new tantrums and often cheap metaphors to outsmart each other.
Except the hired crowd at the public meetings such stuff hardly makes any impact on the politically conscious mass and a very few number finds any relevance in such discourses. Is politics getting pedestrian in nature by the kind of name calling and that too at a personal level?
And no political party can vouch of not indulging itself in that kind of politics those smack of adolescent whims and not a real discourse on issues. Those bring to mind a kind of political ‘kabali’ and creating a condition for theatre of the absurd.
Now, taking it down-beat further there is a section which hanker to steal limelight by espousing for the wrong or something avoidable.
For example and the most recent being the issue over the traits of the killer of Mahatma Gandhi, Nathuram Godse, some calling him a ‘patriot’ and others trying to call it as a mental sickness of such leaders who try to demean the sacrifices made by freedom fighters including the ‘father of the nation’.
Even a leader and member of Parliament from the ruling dispensation at the centre tried to draw a parallel between Godse and former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi making the latter responsible for some 1700 human lives.
On the other side there are leaders like Mani Shankar Aiyer who had set the ball rolling by the use of a sobriquet like ‘Chai-wala’ which later became counterproductive.
Not to lag behind, even Prime Minister Narendra Modi keeps resorting to discernible theatrics those more often than not trigger more such brawls from the other camp.
Real issues missing!
Whether the Prime Minister Narendra Modi calling Rahul Gandhi as ‘papu’ or Rahul’s kinder-garden take down ‘chowkidar…’ or Priyanka Gandhi Vadra using the metaphor of ‘Duryodhan’ for Modi, it is all the same and the hunger for vote has created a dog-eat-dog situation in political discourses where the issues related to the larger mass is just missing.
The most recent pot-boiler is the chapter of Bengal. Whether it is an election or a war is not known but the signals emanating from the state, once famous for its civilities, has set a sordid example of how politics can be lowered to such intolerance and politicians thinking it easy to shepherd the common man down the dingy lanes of the ‘ city of joy’.
It is not politics that used to be or it should be tolerated by the gen-next when they will not take the show of such leaders’ ammoniac greed and bitterness pouring out in public.
