Sir,
Politics has become the most profitable profession in our country so much so that almost all political paupers of pro-independence days have become princes of the post-independence period. By fair means or foul they have amassed heaps of money, piled up plenty of property and gathered all muscle and money power needed by them and their progeny to fight the future polls. More than Rs 25 thousand crore have been stashed away in banks abroad by Indian politicians.
The sun of democracy has hardly dawned in Russia when elected representatives of the Soviet people have asked Gorbachev is he was having a plushdacha (villa), built in the Crimea or the Black Sea coast. Nobody asks our politicians wherefrom they have brought all the wealth and property they possess.
Gandhi wanted our leaders to live in huts. They are living in palaces. They are spending crores and leading a luxurious life. The country is thoroughly bankrupt with our external debt rising to over Rs 90 crore and internal debt to over one lakh crore.
People are already heavily burdened with the ever increasing expenses incurred on administration and ever rising prices. It is impossible for the common man today to fight an election on his own sources. Money and muscle power make or mark the electoral fate of our political masters with the result that the poor and the weak, though honest , intelligent and sincere dare not fight the polls. Poverty, fear and ignorance often compel the poor to sell their votes for a bottle, blanket or bicycle. Many vote for a “Hand” without knowing the human beings behind it. They vote for a horse, or an elephant a camel a bullock, a cycle or a car without knowing their riders.
The Government of the people, by the people and for the people is said to have become a “government off the people buy the people and far the people.” The voted feast as the voters fast. The poor die of hunger, the rich of high cholesterol. Our Neros fiddle while India burns. Such being the sad state of affairs, who will listen to the President’s Independence Day appeal to all our people and political parties to avoid the use of muscle or money power and fight the polls with “dignity, decorum and decency?”
Nehpal Singh Tanwar Alwar
Article extracted from this publication >> September 8, 1989
