24 May,2010

Wanted: better opposition
The speculation these days is about the “lady friend” of a politician who allegedly attempted to commit suicide. Elsewhere, the trend continues of catching politicians off-guard for their stray comments, and then pillorying and cornering them. Whether he really said it or not, and whatever he meant, Digambar Kamat will go down as the chief minister who allegedly said he did not depend on Goan votes.
Emotive issues are easy to campaign with. Even the mere threat of a former chief minister bathing before a government office—to protest the water shortage our high-rainfall State faces—is quick to make news. Incidentally Parrikar was himself the victim in translation, when his “rancid pickle” comment created a major storm some months back, and no amount of clarification or explanation would undo the damage while he was in the running for a top BJP party post at the national level.
Given human nature, it’s easy to get worked up over something that rakes up our sentiments. This is all good and fine; even the media, always searching for a talking point, are satiated for awhile. But we could well be missing the wider point in the process.
For one, we’re losing out on substance in debate. A comment uttered on the spur of the moment is easier to package as a news-story, but larger issues of malgovernance, questionable decisions, corruption, privatisation of common property, imbalanced growth within Goa, and unfair policies towards less-influential sections are simply getting swept under the carpet.
One politician gets targeted for his alleged sexual liaisons, another for the doings of his son. Other kin of politicians get dragged into the debate, when they have the wrong ‘friends’ on Facebook. And so it continues… One cannot avoid the conclusion that politicians get into the mess when they are on the ‘wrong’ side of the fence, but can get away with anything when supporting the ‘right’ party in power.
At the one level, the moral and sexual ethics of our political class is seen as important. The unstated logic is that if politicians can’t be honest in their relationships, they will not honour their wider commitments and responsibilities to society.
But there is another side to this reality. Good men can make terrible political leaders, and vice versa. Franklin D. Roosevelt is said to have been associated with crooked politicians, consulted astrologers, had two mistresses, was a chain smoker and drank eight to ten martinis a day. Winston Churchill is known to have used opium in college. Adolf Hitler, on the other hand, was a decorated war hero, a vegetarian, didn’t smoke, and hadn’t have any extramarital affairs. External appearances can be deceptive.
The point here is that by judging politicians on emotive issues, we are losing the chance to evaluate more deeply their deeds and misdeeds, which will come back to seriously affect our generation and many future generations of our descendents yet unborn.
Politicians in the Opposition, specially given the two-party dominated situation in Goa, tend to be focussed on one goal. That is, getting into power. It is time Goa woke up to the reality that, for the State to go ahead, we need a credible lobby of concerned citizens, academics and professions that takes up serious issues and focusses not just on the fluff.
The responsibility of framing the debate properly lies not just on the formal Opposition and even the media, but also on citizens who appreciate how important a goal this is.
Depending on what you read, you could get very conflicting versions these days about chief minister Kamat’s statement on women and politics. Did he mean that women should raise their economic standards, when he asked them not to run after politics? Was he trying to “dissuade women from joining politics”, as one women’s issues campaigner put it?
We can argue till the cows come how about words, meanings, intended meaning and semantics. But the reality is more important. Even if such controversies create a good news-story or two, building a better State — including one where women get more access to power—isn’t going to come from the headlines alone.