How political realities of Pakistan and India are the same

"From the time when my father was in active politics to the party I'm in, in my interaction with all kinds of politicians, during social dos, and party meetings, I see one common factor: politicians who claim to work for people NEVER talk about people and the issues that beset them. All discussions, debates, wheeling-dealing, intra-party intrigues, electoral planning, post-election power-sharing dreams, it's all about individual agendas and party advancement. Nothing is said about the millions who vote us into power. Literally nothing. It's all a game of power. Nothing else."

Nibbling at his thin-crust Mediterranean pizza, sprinkled with extra mushrooms and chopped sausages, he spoke softly, almost like an afterthought. And as I tried to fork a delectable prawn soaked in creamy sauce, it was as if he was echoing my oft-repeated lament. A scion of a noted political family, barrister by education, dressed in low-slung burgundy jeans, his charmingly boyish face serious, the 33-year-old self-effacing politician, who belongs to a very important party, spoke of politics with an idealism that didn't quite match his pragmatic look at the reality of politics. The 101 of politics, the dream of politics, the coulda-shoulda-woulda of politics, the ideal of politics. Yet something as unashamedly, as indifferently absent from the dynamic called politics in our region as the idea of civility between two hungry piranhas chomping on a drowned corpse in the foreboding Amazonian water. You get the picture, right?

What is so hard about being a political leader for people, I ask. In vain. People vote you into power, people revote you into power, and people accepting your bullsh** as a part of your warped DNA, keep voting for you. Granted that such folks do not deserve much sympathy for being such trusting fools time and again, but then this world is a peculiarly strange place. The bliss of familiarity entraps you to replicate the nodding motion, of a clockwork toy, that repeats unto eternity. The mechanism of voting into power the tried, tested and failed is a phenomenon that is not merely limited to the family-community-ethnicity-and-faith-oriented multitudes of the Southeast Asia it is almost global. Next-time-will-be-better is the muttered hope, as another election takes place, churning out an interchangeable set of self-avowed do-gooders. Election after election.

Don't be deluded by the change in the appearance. The name, manifesto, flag, colours and scandals may vary, but the subcontinental politician, more so the winning one, is indistinguishable from the one he replaced. All of them, barring a lone rebel, a misfit, here and there, are from the same breed of power-seekers who promise big, talk loud, gesticulate wildly, promise the moon and the Mars, specialise in bubble-wrapped rhetoric more jaded than the jingoism of old films, and work on everything but the issues they vowed to, nah, not minimise but eradicate. Lo and behold, after the tenure is over, there are few over-hyped signs of development splashed via full-page ads - paid by the taxpayers' money - speeches and party meetings. While the country is still mired in the darkness of load-shedding, swamped by rain and flood water, overcrowded by ever-reproducing masses, towered over by the inherently apathetic upper classes, shoved hither and thither by a flawed legal system, badly-educated compatriots, corrupt bureaucracy, and nepotism-infected power paradigm. Yep, not much altered. Told ya.

When I am in power, I will change the system. I will eradicate poverty. I will provide employment for all. I will end corruption. I will ensure meritocracy to end nepotism. I will only have saints (halos and all) in my cabinet. I will not allow any discrepancy in governance. I will guarantee that nothing is embezzled from the state treasury. I will make all my elected colleagues answerable to people. I will make this country the jewel of the region. I will not rest until that happens. I will do my best to… Here the sound system faces a technical glitch: it shudders into a static silence. Who knows, maybe in this post-apocalyptic world, machines do have human sensibilities. The kind where consciences awaken from long-induced slumbers, and are-we-there-yet realisation. The repetition of me-mine-my-I echoes like the laughter of a naughty ghost in an old, haunted cave, and no effort to cover your ears drowns out the noise.

Your leader is not the deity you anointed to transport you to the nirvana that only exists in a politician's electoral promise. Your leader merely happens to be a human being, full of frailties and flaws and flurry of words that succumb when faced with the bitter reality of politics outside the enchanted circle. The problems are too huge, the challenges too enormous, the resources too limited to prop the promises, and the coterie of ministers and MPs not who you thought - fallaciously - you inspired. After all, even your best is not good enough when you are surrounded by Lilliputians who boast more than they are worth. And deliver impressive speeches but little tangible action to show as productive development work for the disillusioned millions.

And while the promises break louder than the decorum in Assembly sessions, the hostile posturing of government and Opposition stand uncomfortably smug like one of those replica Taj Mahals the starry-eyed tourist poses with in Las Vegas. And for you, the voter….

Forget about the soirees of identically-dressed men and women from both sides, back-thumping, exchanging staid hellos of fake bonhomie, the drama of public hostility shallower than a saas-bahu story on subcontinental primetime soaps. Forget about the shared ambitions, of you-scratch-my-back… Forget about the promises made to the now-cynical-yet-forced-to-be-trusting public who voted them into Parliament. Forget about the simple fact that all that they do, the undignified theatrical antics, in and out of Parliament, are being watched with growing impatience, a disdain, now by the public who knows it has been duped again. Forget about the protests, and sit-ins, the dharnas and the hartals, the hallmark of their chaotic politics. Forget about the façade of bringing about a change in the rotten system in their new avatar in their dry-cleaned value systems. Forget about the slipping of the mask of humility that they wore better than an Aishwarya Rai adorning a Manish Malhotra showstopper, making hormones jump in glee, and blood-pressure to increase. Forget about the superciliousness of their position rearrange their creaseless dupatta/palu/waistcoat/kurta into a cloak of invincibility. And infallibility.

Let's. Let's have a collective forgetting. A national day of laughter and forgetting. The conditioning is stronger than that of Pavlov's, the mindset that of scrambling, blind mice, and the myopia as incurable as the herd of sheep in an Aesop fable. Now it's your turn to display courage to catalogue the issues. The apathy to your issues would perpetuate. The injustice to your woes would continue while the rich and the powerful flirt with the legal system with coquettishness that may make a seasoned courtesan rethink her adas. Corruption would be rampant, as the few rich ones add more zeroes to their net-worth, the middle class lose sleep over diurnal expenses, and keeping appearances, and the poor exist as extras on a film set, nondescript and disposable. Scandals would mark the past and present of many elected parliamentarians, and nothing would happen to them after their speeches of feigned moral indignation and word-perfect air of self-righteousness. Opposition would stamp its feet while announcing its demands and threats, each more vacuous than the safety deposit boxes of money-launderers and consciences of black-money hoarders.

And you will keep waiting.

You see, it is all your fault. You anoint. You believe. You hope. You expect. You watch. You wait. You let it all happen. Again and again and again. And like always the only one who suffers is… you.