The Question of Lokpal

Corruption has discredited such a large proportion of our politicians that the whole political system stinks of Corruption, nay, the whole governance stinks of corruption.

But then, can we do away with politicians? More importantly, should we do away with politicians?

The only answer is an unambiguous NO!

Politics is too serious to be left only to the politicians. And yet, we strongly believe that, we need righteous politicians much much more than we need apolitical Gandhians!

Given that most politicians may be corrupt. Being a corrupt politician must be a shame; however, merely being a politician must never be a shame! Rather being an effective and efficient politician must be as much a pride as being any other skilled professional.

Our motto must be: Throw out all corrupt politicians, and NOT: Throw all politicians!

In our opinion, the decline in politics despite being present in significant proportion earlier as well (how else do you imagine that the likes of Jawahar and Mohandas came to be?), accelerated in the mid nineteen seventies.

Mrs Gandhi (Indira) institutionalized corruption. Initially people called it dirty politics but later they over-generalized the phenomenon and called politics itself as dirty.

Once that happened, good and honest people drifted and moved away from politics, and thus more and more bad and dishonest people started entering politics.

Then, just as mentioned in Plato's following quote:

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

We came to be governed more and more by evil men.

However, as the disease, so the medicine. What we have brought about by our action (or rather inaction), we can and must do away with with our own action.

Thus the goal must be: Good and honest people must enter politics, become good, honest, effective and efficient politicians, and throw out all bad and corrupt politicians!

Unless we do that, we have only a negligible hope. And in so far as team Anna, and team Baba, are striving to bring about a step in the direction of such a transformation, we must appreciate them. However, if they are interested in feeding their own egos, priding themselves as apolitical Mohandasians, they need to be shunned.

What we need is societal change and systemic change. Societal change through education (knowledge of the truth leading to wisdom), and systemic change in form of a new Constitution.