Monday, September 3, 2012

MUSHROOMING POLITICAL PARTIES IN INDIA – A BANE


We don’t have any dearth of political parties in our country. If someone throws a query regarding the number of political parties and names of the leaders of each political party, to be very frank, my reply will be : “Sorry sir, I don’t have any exact numbers” and for that matter, the names of the leaders of each political party. While being aware of the number of political parties in USA, we are very much sure about the exact numbers as also the names of each political party. While the greatest democracy do have only two parties, the Republican party and Democratic party. Why in the largest democracy, India, parties are mushrooming so also leaders.
On being enquired about the reason for forming a party each leader does have a stock reply. That by forming a new party what he intended was it would enable him to serve the poor better and with more dedication. Often such leaders who form new parties give birth to parties either due to ego clashes with the leaders of parent parties or over trivial issues. The reasons often they list out are ideological differences, actually on deeper investigation the media can very reach a conclusion that the main reasons are selfish motives or some other ulterior motives. Under the pretext of serving the political parties their intentions are serving their own interests. To be more obvious, by becoming a leader of a splinter party he naturally aims to be always in the lime-light and before and after elections the shrewd and wily politician prefers to sit on the fence and by choosing that line he can very well make use of the opportunity to enter into a bargain with the single largest party or parties and thus extract maximum benefits like money or power. A section of the poor who are enomoured of his fire-brand speeches often reposes their faith in his ability to deliver goods and as their beloved leader he would ultimately find solutions to the innumerable problems they confront in every sphere of life. The more illiterate the poor, the easier for their leader to trap them. Unlike a nation like US where the citizens across the States are literate and politically conscious it is quite impossible for the leaders to entrap and deceive them as each citizen does have a clear political outlook. Our nation’s perennial bane is illiteracy, especially political illiteracy by which it often becomes easy for the political leaders to lure these poor into their fold by promising to create heaven on earth if they are elected to power. Taking their words for granted those in the lower strata of the society, incidentally, the illiterate poor constitute majority of our population are deceived and by the time they are aware of their folly it will be too late. The so-called political leader – the so-called savior of the downtrodden and neglected often succeeds in ensuring his and his progenies’ life safe, comfortable and pompous. Given one more chance to be installed in the chair he is certain to utilize the opportunity to amass huge amounts, lakhs or crores for his coming generations also.
India’s bane is these types of political leaders – a peculiar species they are (barring exceptions who constitute a minority) they are actually the main exploiters, than the industrial barons and business tycoons. After all, in our country politics has already evolved into a lucrative industry for which there is no need of capital investment.
We need not conduct an extensive research across our nation why our nation’s 75 percent of population are poor whose poverty, unemployment, malnutrition, illiteracy, homelessness – sorry, the list is endless, still continue to be a hot topic of discussion among a few educated Indians who keep away from plunging into the quagmire of dirty politics plaguing our country.
If and when an enlightenment dawns on the sincere and patriotic leaders of our country to bring in a legislation restricting the number of political parties mushrooming on a daily basis and make it into a law then only our nation could dream about the growth and prosperity of the nation in the true sense of those terms.

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