Deepak Laad
These days clean and honest politicians in polity is a rarity, from galli to Delhi. Just when we were worrying about the species of honest politician becoming extinct, comes along someone like Subhash Velingkar, one of the founder members of the BJP in Goa and till recently a heavyweight in local RSS unit, reinventing himself and taking plunge in active politics, under a brand new label, purportedly to save the state from political instability and uncertainty.
For quite sometime he has been conveying it to the public through umpteen number of interviews and public meetings. His views, without any doubt, sound very idealistic. He articulates on principles, dedication, values, patriotism, welfare of citizens and sacrifices for societal causes in politics. Sadly he has stepped in active politics at inopportune time.
Today, political parties desperate to form Governments need the right numbers, so the winability of candidates takes preference over character and quality. He may abhor the autocratic style of our CM, but that is the way the leadership of democratic nations and institutions here and world over, with shades of extreme to centre right, has been behaving, of late. We have our own PM Modi at the Centre who runs the Government with an iron hand -- takes all the major decisions himself, regardless of who heads the portfolio. The same attitude reflects nearer home, the way our CM runs the affairs of the state. His precarious state of health has rendered him feeble yet neither would he let go of Chief Ministership nor lighten his burden by distributing his ‘heavier’ portfolios among his cabinet colleagues.
In our nation’s history we have seen political experiments, started with good intentions, to usher in clean and honest governance, failing and falling prey to corrupt power seekers. In the seventies Jaiprakash Naryan led total revolution had caught the attention of the nation’s youth. Young Lalu Yadav and Nitish Kumar who rallied around JP were find of the revolution. Using JP as stepping stone both of them later entered in active local politics as messiahs of Dalits and minorities and ruled Bihar, in the beginning together and later on under separate parties. Commonality between them was that both headed corrupt dispensations and bled the state. Lalu was involved in fodder scam of Rs 940 crores. As his family grew richer owning malls and each member palatial bungalows in their name, the common man in Bihar was reeling under abject poverty. Present Nitish Kumar Government has been accused of siphoning funds of Women and child development ministry through the facilitators of child predators operating under the garb of administrators of children shelters homes of Bihar.
The crusaders who once fought corrupt forces, themselves turned out to be more corrupt than those they vanquished and displaced. Kejriwal and cohort used hunger strike of Gandhian Anna Hazare, fighting for appointment of Lokpal, as launching pad of their ‘revolution.’ ‘We are not here to do politics, but to change the ways of politics in the country’ “ thundered Kejriwal in the beginning. Later on he changed his tune saying, “to clean the muck one has to get down in the muck” and Aam Aadmi Party was born to rake the muck. The cap wearing gangs brandishing brooms-their election symbol-led by muffler-man Kejriwal caught Aam Janata’s fancy and the fledgling party won the elections, hands down and formed govt. The unholy power usurpation soon followed.
The founder members Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav and Party’s internal Lokpal were shown the door. Kejri consolidated power and emerged as the power centre. The candidates said to have so carefully screened by Kejri with prosecutorial methodology, turned out to be “ the fake degree holders, wife beaters, bribe takers, and molesters. The ‘revolution’ got stuck up to its neck in the muck it had come to clean up.
Now Velingkar finding twenty honest-to-God kind of candidates who will win without ‘spending’ money on voters or will themselves desist from making money if came to power is a chimera in today’s political environment.
Either he is not alive to present-day ways of the real politics of distributing largesse to electorate for votes or he is wearing blinkers. He fondly recalls BJP incurring Rs 26,000 as poll expenses during their first outing in Panaji constituency, but reality is at today’s ‘going rate’ that amount can fetch only 52 votes. Candidates contesting Panchayat elections spend in lakhs and those contesting assembly elections in crores. In recent Karnataka assembly elections the estimated cumulative amount that the candidates had spent was estimated at whopping Rs seven thousand crores and this week from a single car Rs five crore were seized by the enforcement agency in poll-bound Telangana.
Principled Velingkar is also seen smudging his former party and old colleagues after flipping, like any ordinary opportunist politician. He now makes lot of noise opposing casinos but, we do not remember him ever opposing them in the past when he headed RSS unit and tangoed with the state BJP leadership.
These days populism and voter appeasement win you elections and not values and principles. To succeed in electoral politics, he better get rid of his pet ‘revolution’ of opposing grant-in-aid to English medium primary schools. He may be receiving lot of love from Cristian community as he claims, but will not get their votes if he continues sticking with his ‘favourite issue’. There is sizable number of Hindu and Muslim parents too, members of FORCE, who subscribe to the view that education in Shakespeare’s mother tongue, from the very beginning, will lay solid foundation of knowledge of that language and help open up vistas of higher education and bright career prospects for their children.
Majority appeasement is in and moral rectitude is passé in today’s politics. He will soon learn it the hard way, when he sets out on his actual journey in real world of politics.
