Of political flux and addled leaders

Raju Korti
Politics is not a game, it is an earnest business. It is also a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles and a conduct of public affairs for private advantage. What has been happening in Maharashtra since the last five years has been nothing short of a spectacular heap of garbage that rides on expediencies, helplessness and recourses that leave even the most wise, none the any wiser.

The dark clouds of jugglery of power, all in the name of one-upmanship and political acumen, has a strange but vulnerable subservience and servility to it. While this is being supported or scoffed at from individual vantage points, the absurd algorithms they throw up each time, must leave everyone stupefied and bewildered as newer depths in compromise are plumbed with alarming regularity.

The latest in the line is the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) faction led by Sharad Pawar urging the Election Commission to disqualify Deputy CM Ajit Pawar and his flock after their much anticipated adieu to the party. But this apparent obvious political manoeuvre is shrouded by the umpteen meetings the uncle and nephew have held for what can only but a desperate bid for reconciliation as each calculates it. Who blinks first? The nephew, whose early morning oath-taking experience turned out to be joke at the cost of a dazed electorate, or the uncle, labelled by an overawed media as "wily old fox" and a "master at deft manoeuvres"?

The desperation of both juts out from their stances and their responses, not sure what exactly they must do and are throwing their dices randomly in the hope they will fall to their advantage. A somewhat similar situation has been obtaining in in the Shiv Sena right since Raj Thackeray broke away from cousin Uddhav after the former felt that uncle Bal Thackeray pitchforked the latter at his cost. Raj did not dither as much and as long as Ajit did and swiftly set up his own outfit. The stunned patriarch had obviously not bargained for such a decisive action and in a matter of just one week, dropped his staunch demeanor to beseech Raj to come back in his party mouthpiece Saamna. That emotional outpouring did not help much either. The depth, or the lack of it, about the two estranged cousins coming together is as predictable as Ajit Pawar and Sharad Pawar joining hands together again. At times they have been smug and non committal and at times in denials that only confound confusion. This unpredictability means anything is possible when expediencies become the sole criteria of remaining politically relevant.

The pitch in both the parties is queered by issues relating to party symbol, mass defections and listlessness among the despondent rank and file. At the other end of this spectrum is the Bharatiya Janata Party which has been deriving pride and pleasure in engineering splits and flaunting them as strategic victories. If its leaders have not learnt the lessons from its betrayals, it deserves what it gets. While the political waters get muddied more and more, those who watch this from the sidelines, can only pity themselves and wring their hands in despair. Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying all the wrong remedies.

One of the reasons why I dislike politics -- despite the unavoidable evil that it is -- is that truth is rarely a politician's objective. Election and power and pelf are. People have not changed politics. It is the other way round and there can be no hope in heaven or hell of any course correction.