Ever since Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswamy declared election schedule, I have only seen politicians criticizing other parties. And most of these are about past things, about past leaders who are not even competing elections this time, or about things that happened elsewhere away from the constituency from which that particular politician is competing.
The thing to note is that they are not talking about future. They are talking about past. They are telling about what their predecessors did in their party.
What the people of other parties did in their past. How corrupt the opponents are. How they are communally dividing people. How they will be harmful to the people.
Do we need to hear these? Past can influence the present or future only as much as a starting trouble can break down a car during the middle of its journey.
Then, why should we pay heed to these words? Why can’t they make promises? Because they know they can’t keep them? May be.
US President Mr. Barack Obama made 895 promises during his campaign journey. (click here to access an 8 MB excel file that lists these) And he is moving to fulfilling each one of them.
Why can’t any Indian politicians be so bold? May be there are some who do make and keep promises. Yet there are no great expectations from anybody. Why? I don’t know. I am in no position to answer. But I know only one thing:
Should there be an Indian Obama a very talented someone with a ready to die attitude (politics is physically injurious; but talented people find other much safer jobs) must enter politics.
Or an alternative is to make all the political parties internally democratic, which is now difficult to be implemented with the current set of leaders wanting every bit of power.
I think I should write about the need of internal democracy in another post.