The Righteous and the Wicked

"Remember that howsoever you are played or by whom, your soul is in your keeping alone, even though those who presume to play you be kings or men of power. When you stand before God, you cannot say, "But I was told by others to do thus," or that virtue was not convenient at the time. This will not suffice." --King Baldwin IV

Now lots of good people in politics , must ignore their soul, because if they have been suspected to have one, they would be eaten alive by their party, their constituency, or even the media. We have a moral responsibility, all of us, and that includes politicians, to do good, for what good is a life that does not benefit your fellow man. However, that moral responsibility is rather difficult to get a hold of when you have material responsibilities on a plate that also includes one of the most powerful jobs in the country. Make no mistake, even a lowly State Minister wields more power than you or I will get to experience in a lifetime. In their own little worlds of mala fide hubris they are their own gods. They hold absolute power over the people of their constituency, of their state, and in some especially egregious cases, the whole bloody country. And what they fail to realise, that they're not gods... but SERVANTS. Yes, politicians, your friendly local MLA, and your even friendlier Chief Minister are, were, never supposed to be gods ruling over the earth.

No, they were supposed to be our servants. Listen to our commands, do our bidding, et cetera.

Except that in this country we have a really bad habit of turning powerful people into gods, instead of cutting them down to size. A look at any southron actor will tell you this much, hell even northerner movie stars have temples erected in their name. These people are just as good, or just as bad as the normal people you deal with in daily life. It doesn't make any sense to think that actors will make good politicians, or that politicians would make good rulers, or any other damn thing for that matter. In fact, here's a rather short list, describing common sense practices to be followed, in order to bring the people who run our country, down to actually running it.

1. Cut the number of seats in the Lok Sabha/Rajya Sabha/State Assemblies to half. The logic here is that it is much better to have one man doing(or not doing) the work of two men rather than vice versa.

2. Reduce the amount of money made available to politicians. Be it block development fund or constituency fund or whatever, it really doesn't get spent anyway. Set all funds into an independently audited central bank, and make all payments for projects loans from that bank to individual organisations, payable with interest.

3. Remove minister's emoluments, monetary or otherwise. Come on..would you really appreciate it if your servant came to work every day in a cavalcade of Scorpios? Politicians are our servants..not our rulers. Once you reduce the money, dishonest people and the mafia won't view politics as attractive, and therefore won't enter politics

4. Forget Anna Hazare. Yes the man has rock solid ideals, and a brilliant Lokpal bill to pass..but after him, what?? Do you seriously expect that the Lokpal will be as effective an organisation 20 years from now?

5. Conduct a screening system for issuing voter id cards. This would feature a questionnaire on basic facts and current info and news. I would suggest that Prometric conduct the screening, what with us fast becoming an IT-age country, UID and all.