Elections - an opportunity

With yet another Loksabha election in the world’s largest democracy passing by, India may have lost a golden opportunity to wage front-end war against all the evils of the society. A country of 900 million electors among the 1.3 crore population and more than 10.38 Lakh polling stations, it was a costly business, a festival of democracy with a unique touch of India. Sadly, it is ending up further dividing the society into caste, class & religious terms as many so-called visionary leaders reverberated multiple times the terms like Dalit, Hindu, Muslim, Middle Class, and lower Class and so on for their own benefit. People became conscious of their allotted identity. It was once in a five year an opportunity which could egregiously be used for boosting the social indicators and aware people of the various shortcomings like water deficiency, climate change, the role of education, women upliftment, prejudices and so on which India is in dire need of; as well for providing for the greater unity. Instead what talked about is nationalism and became protective of themselves from the outside forces, completely ignoring the inside roadblocks.

It is not that the elections are made for a particular purpose, for aspiring India and the gargantuan youth population, India must make use of every possible opportunity available to it. There is a reciprocal tendency between the electors and the leaders; both mimic each other’s action and aspirations. But then a leader has a vision for the betterment of the country. He/she is selfless. He is the indirect representative of the public voices in the sacred parliament. With it linked the future of the countrymen, its diverse flora and fauna. The country must bloom. However, there were leaders who with their long term visions once went against the ‘mobs’ and popular emotions. Popular emotions are not always judiciously weighed upon. They may turn up cynical in the end, for example, the thousands of death during the French revolution. Mahatma Gandhi had a vision based on his end-means philosophy. He wanted both the end & the means to be sacred and thus withdrew the violent-turned Non-Cooperation Movement. He was widely criticized for this but then had the steel to face it.

Elections are not fought for personal motives. The representative who is fighting the election should realize the moral responsibility of the position he is aspiring for. He should have a purpose to be a member of the parliament or the state legislature. Without it, the constituency will do better without a leader.