Friday, February 18, 2011

The difficulty of being good

Dr Jayprakash Narayanan was manhandled yesterday in AP Assembly over the Telengana issue by MLAs from another party.

He has the wherewithal to state his opinion on the reason for not wanting the formation of Telengana despite the flood of opinion in the contrarian direction. A former distinguished bureaucrat and brilliant demagogue who has given opportunity to young people to join his party and provided them tickets to contest elections purely on the basis of merit. He is one of the rarest of the rare people in the country who has wanted to do something about Indian political scene and managed to make headway by winning a seat in the AP assembly elections in a context dominated by rowdy and milieu of corrupt politicians. There are plenty who have wanted but few who could actually prove their tenacity. Hats off to this person.

There is something terribly wrong about our democracy and if it doesn't get the requisite interest from people at large, we will continue to go on the downslide. Its manifestations are all over the press in the form of scams that are getting unravelled on a regular basis. Our insitutions meant to protect democracy are much sluggish than the people who know how to break laws. This can also be seen from the number of RTI activists who have given up their lives for wanting to make the government more accountable. Its so terrible.

Loksatta Party which he heads still will take years to mature as a sound political group for a variety of reasons but his efforts, commitment for a clean political culture and leadership is all in front of us. We need to figure out if we can also participate in some form and may be support him as well.