Ignorance

The general elections are coming up. All parties are devising their strategies to acquire as many votes as possible. The parties are talking about seat sharing in all states. Banners, slogans and election songs are under preparation. While the political parties are working overtime, the common people are only hoping and praying that a good government would form in the centre.

"No politician is genuine. All of them are after money and power", a software engineer said. Though his concern is genuine and is shared by many people, it is important to assess why politics is in such a state now.

We blame that the men in power and men who want to be in power are ignorant and selfish. True. But, they are just one among us. They are just representative of the people from each constituency. Let us asses what we do every day. We jump signal while coming to office to save time. We do not respect most of the traffic rules. Most of us do not wear helmet even though it is declared mandatory by the government. Most of us still smoke on roads and in public places even though smoking in public is banned. Because we are confident that we can escape when caught, by bribing. We still throw rubbish wherever possible. We don’t respect queues and always try to evade it to save time. Some of us don’t even have a voter ID card and some of us don’t even think about voting.

These are clear signs of ignorance and selfish behaviour and it is exhibited by most of the people. Politicians are one of us and it is natural that they exhibit this behaviour. But, it does not mean that the political system is correct.

When India was fighting for independence, people wanted independence, leaders wanted independence and there was a harmony between them. They were not selfish. They were not ignorant. So, they were successful.

We are all waiting for a positive change for a long time now. But, the mistake we do is that we are expecting the change to happen at the top of the tree. We expect the politicians to become good guys overnight. This is wrong. The change should happen at the grass root levels. This means, we should change. We should be more responsible and considerate towards others and respect the laws. As Barack Obama said, “Change can happen” and it can happen right here.