Descent into Nothingness

Everytime we think things cant get any lower, they do.

We have been treated this week to the most brazen use of money power in politics that I have ever seen and this has happened in our state of Karnataka. In unintended irony, or cruel coincidence, Barack Obama exhorted American kids to 'beware of children in Bangalore and Beijing", for they might, he implied, steal American jobs if the local kids didnt buck up and hit the books. Well, they neednt worry about us Kannadigas for much longer, the way things are going.

The entire Karnataka story over the past couple of decades has been built on private enterprise. There was a brief period, during S. M. Krishna's time when we actually felt 'governed" and newspaper headlines were about new IT start ups and foreign investment. Alas, that was little more than one swallow and it did not a summer make, as our winter of discontent, plotted by the Machiavellian Gowda family has been nurtured spectacularly by this rudderless current dispensation, which teeters precariously on the precipice like a somnambulist on a tightrope.

There are two things about this scenario which distress me and should distress you, too, dear reader. The first is that private enterprise,even in a democracy, can only take you thus far. The state cannot abdicate its role on providing law and order, delivering basic infrastructure and creating a congenial environment for investment. On all counts, the state is absent or incredibly incompetent. The condition of the Shiradi Ghat linking Bangalore to Mangalore and which sees a humongous amount of traffic each day is but one example of a lack of will on getting things done. Claiming that highway maintainence is a central subject just wont wash. Why is the state government there, if not to exert pressure and get things done? What about our pathetic electricity shortages as early as the month of November? How can industry or, indeed, the common man function without he absolute basics...bijli, pani, sadak...being assured?

The second thing is, if at all, more worrying...it is the general inability or the lack of interest of the voter in making the government work. The circus of the last few days- legislators fiddling in resorts while North Karnataka drowned, chief ministers reduced to teary eyed wimps begging to be allowed to stay in power, goons lording it over the system- will be forgotten in a few weeks. Business as usual. That would be a travesty. And it neednt be.

Where is the media when we need it? If it was public power and incessant media pressure that managed to put the wretched Manu Sharma into jail, then why cant we join together to create a stink about why a decent and upright officer like Mr Baligar was summarily transferred? I shed no tears for the all powerful lady minister who has had to put in her papers. But we should-more importantly, every Bangalorean should- be concerned when the few remaining upright beaurocrats in the city are harassed till their resolve is broken. But maybe Mr Baligar isnt Page 3 enough to get this full frontal treatment from the press.

It's time we lived in a democracy. A REAL democracy, where every citizen has a say in what happens. And that will not happen, till we punish those who take us for granted, again and again and again....

Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.
Ronald Reagan