Shoeing away the politicians

I looked up politics in the dictionary, and it's a combination of 2 words, poli, from the latin meaning many, & tics, meaning bloodsucking creatures--Robin Williams

If you would take a gander at todays Indian politics, it would seem that the public is finally fed to the back teeth with pointless promises which often never materialize.It is now that the humble shoe, a lesson we oddly had to learn from Iraq, has become the chief weapon of the public's discontent.The past few days have seen no less a personage than the home minister, Mr.Chidambaram, becoming the subject of public ire from someone who had a special place for him on his sole.Naveen Jindal is the latest casualty of footwear projectiles.

As someone who loathes politicians on principle, I am both delighted and depressed by the turn of events.Dont get me wrong, I dont disapprove of it at all.. I'm depressed on two counts...one, that it took so long to happen, and two that it is only happening as a set of isolated incidents.I would suppose, that in India, a public slippering/shoeing/sneakering/stillettoing... or what have you.. would have much greater significance.. not least because of the fact that the vast majority of those who understand the significance of the discontent in a protest expressed by a podiatric projectile, rather than in Iraq, where George Bush(George II, of crawford,Tx. his reign of error is over, Hallelujah!) put it down to mere attention seeking behaviour.

Let us look at what has been the result of the past election, the UPA was voted to power,true... in a comeback even most hollywood underdog movies could not fathom, especially after being drubbed for 2 terms by the NDA.The UPA's platform was.. "Aam Aadmi Ka party"...what have we seen in the past 5 years...

1. Pro's first.. An economic boom... wait.. I hear the knives of the recessionitas being sharpened... I'll get to it..
2. The Indo-US Nuclear deal, & possibly the ending of nuclear apartheid in an effort to meet India's growing energy demands

& now.. the prison is broken.. because here come the cons

1. The economic boom..boom in more of the sense of a bubble bursting.. thanks to out astute (then) finance minister's loan waiver,and cheap vote bank politics.
2. A decision of the myopic dinosaurs in the education department to award a substantial amount of seats toward reservation( more vote bank politics)
3. The solving of many high profile cases... or rather resolving.. because as usual, it was bungled..& eventually solved because of intense pressure from the media...some cases are still pending, or unsolved.. the most monstrous case of bungling being the aarushi murder case.

well now.. what have we here..I think, there has been a massive misunderstanding, considering the overly agrarian policies of the UPA,in an attempt to garner as many votes as possible... it would seem, that to them 'Aam, in "Aam aadmi" did not mean common.. as in common man... but in the more deliciously ironic "Aam", as in mango.

Now, as that time comes again, when we have to vote to select who will rule us again, Let us see what it boils down to, In one corner, we must choose, between

1. Someone who cannot get off his hindutva high horse.
2. A proven visionary as a finance minister or prime minister,but whose party's track record during the past term has been anything but enviable.
3. The so called 'Third front',a front led by the communists, & then really, god help us then..

I dont wish to see any of these come to power, I prefer a government of the competent, of people who truly do understand the issues that do plague the nation, why not have, say, N.R.Narayan Murthy for the IT sector, Sam Pitroda for the telecom sector, Dr.Verghese Kurien in the agriculture sector, to name a few.

To end, to all poiticians, and those who still think that the system can save us,to you, who still demand that people excercise their power of choice, when the choice is only between bad & worse...I quote a passage from Atlas Shrugged...as a riposte.

"the answer you deserve is only: 'Try and get it.'

"You proclaim yourself unable to harness the forces of inanimate matter, yet propose to harness the minds of men who are able to achieve the feats you cannot equal. You proclaim that you cannot survive without us, yet propose to dictate the terms of our survival. You proclaim that you need us, yet indulge the impertinence of asserting your right to rule us by force-and expect that we, who are not afraid of that physical nature which fills you with terror, will cower at the sight of any lout who has talked you into voting him a chance to command us.

"You propose to establish a social order based on the following tenets: that you're incompetent to run your own life, but competent to run the lives of others-that you're unfit to exist in freedom, but fit to become an omnipotent ruler-that you're unable to earn your living by the use of your own intelligence, but able to judge politicians and to vote them into jobs of total power over arts you have never seen, over sciences you have never studied, over achievements of which you have no knowledge, over the gigantic industries where you, by your own definition of your capacity, would be unable successfully to fill the job of assistant greaser."

So in sum, till there is an actual candidate, who will actually implement any beneficial policy, while doing so at the expense of vote bank politics, it is probably fitting that shoes continue to be thrown.