.......Alas no one wants to be an aviation minister & improve the sector; no one wants to be an iron ore minister & stop corruption; no one wants to be a railway minister & improve the conditions etc etc....but everyone wants to be the prime minster. Everyone wants to declare their candidature for the post of PM & improve the condition of ever suffering aam adami, not by some future planning but by just word of mouth. It sometimes looks like just by their becoming the PM all the problems of the Union of India would be solved. It’s not that their candidature is weak or strong; but it’s the council of ministers who has failed to deliver for their leader. This is not the problem of the current government, but this has been the problem of the nation since independence or let’s says this existed in our country as long as we can remember, or let’s simply put it as part of our history.

In democracy the leader of opposition is usually the PM in waiting, but in the past few months we have suddenly seen a rise in the number of candidates for the PM’s post. We the people of India have come across a situation in the past few months where we see many PM candidates from the same party. Everyone says we’ll improve the condition but without any roadmap; no concrete future plan for the aam ADAMI. The aam ADAMI is just seeing the drama of great Indian politics unfolding with everyone putting their best foot forward for the post of PM. There being just two national level parties, the people of India are left with very few choices & in this era of coalition regional parties have a say in who would be the PM at least when it comes to pure coalition whereas in other case the first family of Indian politics decides its own ways.

A look back into the history since independence shows us how greed has taken over  individuals just to be in the record books so that they can be remembered as one of the PM’; well  the fact still remains that no one remembers a cabinet minister but all remember the PM. We the people of India have rarely come across a minister who has made a difference in his ministry; at the same time we have not seen a PM who had full control over his ministers. People have seen cabinets being formed by hook or crook not with the purpose of serving the people but to enjoy the powers of a ruling government.

To be the prime minister of India means representing a billion people around the world and also taking care of billion lives. However no PM has been able to understand this, all they have been doing is saving their heads from rolling because there is always an option of someone else in a big party.  They many say that this is politics, but what of the oath one takes while taking over as PM of India, there at that point of time one doesn’t remain a member of the party but becomes a representative & caretaker of the country including the people who haven’t voted for him/her. It’s tiring to see that still people hold politics above everything. Even in the 21st century nothing has changed, the simple reason being we have not come out of our old thoughts and traditions, but are still nurturing them. There have been no path-breaking or rule changing ministers or PM’s.

We have only seen our minister’s & PM’s showing conventional morality but no one ever had the courage of showing higher morality. By conventional morality, I mean that they try to go by the book & don’t want to take any risk & take out of box decisions. Even for small decisions they depend on the so called high command. Decisions, rules & policies of public importance are stuck either in bureaucratic tangles or the alliance partners are not in favour of these decisions or policies. The so called idea of CMP (Common Minimum Program) in the past decade has hurt the people of India the most; we openly saw that during the Indo-American Nuclear deal when the left parties withdrew the support from the government at the same time we also saw the drama of Indian politics when the minority government suddenly got support from parties who have been against the government for the past 4 years. Well some people may say MP’s were paid other may say they were asked to vote for the government or else CBI would be there at their doors the next day. Well any day our smart MP’s thought of the first being the better option.

PM’s have come and gone but nothing changes; at this point I remember the words of great Jaiprakash Narayan which he said after the win in the 1977 elections –“Once again people of India have been cheated” (ek bar phir janta thaghi gayi). JP was anti-corruption crusader who allied all the non-congress parties and bought them under one banner to fight against the congress. But after the win in the elections when he saw the fight amongst his own people for the post of PM; a depressed JP went to rajghat & uttered the above words. He may have said these words for the one election but this holds true for all the elections that people of India have seen since independence.

Every individual in every party small or big; state level or national level is just fighting for the chair. Most MP’s, MLA’s, corporators or even a small counsellor is so involved in corruption that they are least concerned about public welfare.  The main reason being most of these individuals have won the elections either on the strength of money or because of their caste. Since they invested heavily during election campaign they will recover it from the tax payers money which the government have allocated to the position that they hold. These are the people who in coming times become powerful & make their way to New Delhi to try & grab strong portfolios so that they can spread more corruption. Though this doesn’t hold true for all the individuals in politics but can be said about majority of them. Well let’s not forget that our political system has been badly corrupted & it would take substantive efforts to make it clean. What we can’t see is any efforts being put either the PM or alliance partners to bring a change. A bit of the blame has to be taken by the people, as we have been voting sterio type individuals who have nothing new to offer, but loads of false promises.

After 65 years of independence we have not being given all that we deserved. Instead today the country is at a very difficult stand point as we have been divided into two nations one the new India which resides in cities & is having showing immense growth; however the other India which is very close to us that resides in the villages nothing has been done for it, it is still struggling for its basic needs – roti kapada makan. The progress there is so slow that sometimes it looks like in the next decade our villages will be totally empty as everyone would try to move to the cities in search of better living.  And let’s not forget that most of our MP’s come from rural India. This is mostly the greed that exists in minds of our elected representatives.

This is the fifteenth parliament seated of Independent India; however a look back shows us that most of the PM’s have been appointed due to a compromise formula. There has been a rarity where people of India were given an option & they voted for him. Be it the case of Morarji Desai, H.D.Devegodda, I.K. Gujaral, Chandresakar, P.V. Narsimarao & the count continues......At this point we are only reminded of the words of JP which he truly said & we see it happening election after elections... “Once again people of India have been cheated” (ek bar phir janta thaghi gayi).

Am unable to find an appropriate end to this topic, just few lines by distinguished writer Ved Parkash Mehta –“I feel the real secret of India lies in the prime minister. His character reconciles various Indias”.