Identity Politics: Lets derecognize it!

Trend: Drivers of voting being anything other than merit

We as a nation have tradionally believed in dividing ourselves on frivolous lines of religion, caste, creed, language etc. In fact our micro identity has given us more comfort than our larger identity of being Indian. We saw these being taken advantage of during the British rule, but still we are not prepared to give that up. In fact it is part of our social fabric now.

In that kind of a context, we take the same sentiment to the poll grounds (uneducated people necessarily) and nominate the person who most closely resembles our own identity. Now a days the other identity card that our parties enjoy playing is the card of secularism.

In fact people are not totally wrong in thinking so. A lot of our politicians have proved their merit or rather lack of it in living upto these expecations. The philosophies of equity, equality, justice, governance dont mean anything to them. Vote ke liye sala kuch bhi karega !!!

It is funny to see how a certain family in our society has displayed natural churning of party heads despite an obvious and glaring decline in leadership quality of its successive generations. Looking at the trend, this appears to be a logarithmic curve which may never touch the x-axis.

The Moot Question

In that kind of a situation who is to be blamed. The man who believes in these petty identities or the person who sees in these divisive tendencies, a natural plank that would spring board him into authority?

The Alternate Approach:

For us to become a truly healthy democracy, we have to rise beyond narrow confines that our birth grants us and reward merit and merit alone. The complex tasks of governance and public administration can only be assured through individual qualities of intellect, honesty, leadership etc. Caste, religion, location etc pale into insignificance. Its a dis-service we do, when we vote giving consideration to the above identities.

There are excellent examples in the form of Gandhiji, Patel, Vivekandanda who outgrew their birth identities and displayed leadership at national levels. We can learn several lessons from their lives.This is one of the vital ones.

Jai Hind !