How to become a politician in few easy steps
You see them on TV shows. You read their almost identical statements in newspapers. You re-read the same statements in 140-characters on their Twitter timelines, aka media noticeboards. The politicians and their litanies. Of boasts, rhetoric, complaints, attacks, clarifications, lies, half-baked truths that are worse than lies, hollow words, big claims, and empty promises. Nowhere is this phenomenon more visible than in my beloved homeland. Okay, Indian politicians are almost like the kumbh-ka-mela-separated siblings of Pakistanis when you read between the lines or the headlines they make. Same, same, na?
There's no point writing or talking or ranting - in any order - about the subcontinental politicians. A special study must be devoted to it, with specialists from the fields of sociology, anthropology, psychology, xenoarchaeology, astrology, cryptozoology, and history of Neanderthals. Results may still not be substantive or palatable, would be the disclaimer.
How to become a politician is the question many nodding their heads in awed admiration may wish to have an answer to after watching Barack Obama's inaugural speech, or Nelson Mandela's first presidential address, or Katrina Kaif in Rajneeti, in her endearingly faulty Hindi and flawless avatar as the recent, bereaved widow, of you guessed it, a politician, evoking a sentimental response in the janta. Now, how to actually become a politician is no rocket science but you gotta match one or the other criterion in the list that follows:
a) Born into a political family
b) Married into a political family
c) Be in a billionaire's club (the rupee one)
d) Be powerful (land or drug mafia dons may apply too)
If you're the chosen one, you don't have to wait for the father or uncle to kick the bucket - physically or politically - to enter the business of politics. Plenty is the room for all of you to coexist - albeit uneasily, with many a Brutus lurking in the shadows - as the chairman/woman/person, vice-chair, president, vice-president, assistant to the chair, assistant to the president, deputy assistant to the chair…okay, my head reels quantifying the positions one family or its cronies hold in one party, so I better stop counting or cussing (only in my head, dearies).
When you see that prim, graceful woman from the US addressing tiny groups of people all across America talking about woman power, you smirk. Hey, Mrs Clinton, we had female heads of state before you could even think of putting a female in any role in the White House other than the beautiful hostess or a cheat-suffering spouse. Pssst, do not even think of bringing up that tiny, uncomfortable detail: all female heads of state in our part of the world inherited the post, be it a Bhutto, Gandhi or Khaleda Zia. That's not to take any credit away from their very remarkable personalities, iron-fist leadership, or razor-sharp acumen, but let's call a spade a shovel, and not think of them as dynastic politicians. How else would we chant of our equality with men in our primitive, patriarchal, pessimistic, political set-up?
And about cheating spouses, that may only be a moral issue for an Eisenhower, a Kennedy or a Clinton, but having extramarital affairs comes as naturally to most subcontinental politicians as changing freshly starched kurtas during a hot summer vote-asking day. Or making U-turns. Or fish living in water. You get the drift? Notice the pattern of all these handsome American blokes falling for women who write revelatory books, confide in too many people, or keep dresses as mementos? But our (cheating) politicians would guffaw at these simple Joes: gentlemen, we deny the existence of (other) women in our lives even when our wives find our e-mails (not to them) confirming a quick, hot, sensuous break in St Tropez, or the familiar London. Cheating the nation, the voter and the wife … all in a day's work. Without batting an eyelid, or the conscience missing a beat. Or was it the badtameez dil?
As you see SUV after SUV in your posh residential area, or the dirt lanes in your village, roll your eyes or sigh in exasperation, you know the local MP/MNA/senator/minister has arrived with his posse of men who are interchangeable and ever dependable to do as you please. They even guide the guards in the Vigo behind your SUV to point their highly polished AK-47s in this and that direction. Beware of the wrath of a politician's guard who may see you trying to overtake the motorcade in your ungainly rush to pick up your child from school, or take the crying one to buy a Made-in-China Action Man. If the SUV is not speeding like a vehicle from Fast and Furious 7, trust me it ain't the youngest son of your neighbourhood minister of this and that. Speed makes up for the slowness of mind, of brain, and of action that was promised to that witless and brainless entity: the voter.
Yes, the voter who nods his head in the rallies making up the numbers that is the sign of one politician's popularity over the other. The voter who believes the rhetoric that's shouted in a hoarse voice in many microphones, notwithstanding the inanity of the words and the repetition of promises that are of a world that's known as the never-never land. The voter who believes his vote matters, and it does because if he doesn't vote, no amount of rigging would win anyone any election anywhere. 101 of elections.
Yes, it's the very same voter who votes again and again for the same candidate without getting the answer to even the basic questions. Like, where's the concrete road you promised in my village that's flooded every year? What happened to equipping our rural hospital with at least the requisite beds and medicines even if you can't get us conscientious medical staff? When would you build the fancy school you promised for my child, a school that would be on the lines of the one your child attends? Who would ensure the local SHO listens to my complaints and takes action against the local big shot who victimises all who don't jump when he whistles? When would I be noticeable as a human being, forget about a citizen of your country whose rights are the same as yours?
The faces change, the colour of the Land Cruiser and Lexus changes, the hair turn grey, the faces acquire lines, all controllable thanks to a quick, secret weekend trip to that good old glitzy, blingy Dubai. While you order a new SUV during your botox, hair-plug, skin-rejuvenation or a little nip-and-tuck session, and the second wife or the third mistress hands over your gold card at Hermes and Graff, while admiring, bored, her new highlights and super-toned body, life goes on. Politics go on.
And nothing changes. And it's not supposed to, darlin'. Politics is a game, a business today; stop pontificating: it's to serve the people. Yes, yes, people in your family and close to you, not those poor simpletons who vote for you. I know it's their fault, right? As you, the politician, mumble in a monotone: Bhai, vote kyon daite ho baar baar aik hee bande ko? I'm getting late for my little sushi do at that new place, what's the name, jaani? Puma? No? Roma? Oh yes, Zuma…