Understanding Hungry Politicians

I don’t get surprised by Political Corruption. Here’s the explanation:

One fine day, a fox (citizen of Jungle) and a lion (the king of the jungle) visited Ahmedabad. After taking ride of Ahmedabad- Darshan (site-seeing) Bus for the whole day, they went to Vishala, the famous Gujarati restaurant, for dinner.

The waiter asked the fox – “Two full Gujarati dishes for you two, right sir?”

“No, only one is fine” – replied the fox.

The waiter asked surprisingly - “Why? The lion is not hungry?”

“If he would have been so, I would have been his meal right then” - responded the fox with a gentle smile. And he added – “I have made sure, I remain with the king, who is well-fed”.

Moral of the story: Always have people, who are satiated, in power structure, else they’ll eat you out.

In the pre-independence era, people who were entering into the politics perceived it as a way of serving the nation and usually were successful in their respective careers (Tilak, Gokhale, Gandhi, Nehru, Patel, Jinnah and almost all of them were fairly to significantly successful in their respective professions). Making money out of such service was just out of question for them. They entered into politics to give and not to take. In short, on personal level, they were satiated.

However, as the country became free and when our politicians gained power (and charge of lots of money), politics became a profession (rather a business). 

Today the system works more or less like this:

· Get in the circle of a political party of interest, and be very nice to the influential voices there

· Get funds from family, friends and relatives (society in-general). You also should have great potential of attracting funds from the businesses. Needless to say, the amount for contesting an election reaches crores. If you can make your party-heads believe that you are worth initial investment and will generate great returns for the party, you are likely to win a party-ticket to fight election.

· If you win election,

o You are expected to enrich party treasury

o All of your friends and relatives, who have invested in your political career must be benefitted (economically, at least)

o Satisfy demands of all business houses, who provide capital for your election campaign

o Make sure all grass-root workers of your party have improved life styles

Thus, before even resuming service to the people, the politicians have a huge list of hungry stake-holders today. The system is set up such that the people in power have to feed all major election-investors to remain in power, else they won’t reinvest in the future.

Politicians very well know that kick-backs, non-merit favour, and manipulation of lawful procedures are various forms of corruption, which is unlawful. But, this is the system that our society has cohesively created. We may hate our politicians from the bottom of our hearts, but they are there because they deserved to be there. Is there any alternative to this system? How can one become an influential political leader without going through the above inconvenient steps? How can we have well-fed politicians, who don't eat up public funds? How can we have givers?

You and I must come up with the answers of above questions and act for systematic improvements with persistence. Let’s not forget, we all have created the present system and we only can ameliorate it. 

My suggestions –

· we need to push for election reformations like: state funded election-campaign and complete transparency of accounts and of candidate selection procedures of political parties

· And, of course, we need more aware citizens

· last but not least, let’s elect satiated candidates, who are doing fine at personal level.

Image courtesy: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQuPiIUtQ1HME9IKXDmwd6nnlwghD6iv-VM7JSKzAHN88WOm8ea-ERbi4hl199Va5ZEMeUr90G59K_WnLJE33V2JSZLFu0f9WOD85mzVCfJmhV2QCQRAIWI7osJbHMTaqTq4CDoYEY6xTg/s1600/1_671615_1_34.jpg

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