PLASTINO D’COSTA
Our country has woken a bit late on the ‘Vote Chori’ issue, which should have been addressed immediately after the Har yana or Madhya Pradesh elections, where the result demonstrated the obvious: there was some hanky panky in the outcome of the elec tions. Thanks to the relent less fight put up by Rahul Gandhi who was ridiculed and made fun of for mention ing that the elections were rigged at different levels.
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The sad part is not that biased people succeeded in poking holes at his theory, but the silence of influential Indians, including celebrities in sports, business and en tertainment who succumbed to pressure tactics. Their silence has cost the nation badly and their undue influ ence over their followers has withered. Surprisingly, they still have that many follow ers. Interesting times are on the horizon because ‘Vote Chori’ has hit the streets as the nation grapples and demands accountability on compromised institutions, and although the media that exposed this decep tion used sample data from Goa to prove Vote Chori has taken place in Goa, it is still a lesser issue than the al ready prevailing and deeply entrenched ‘Vote Slavery’ in Goa. What is vote slavery? Well, it is when citizens vote for the same politician their en tire lives irrespective of his/ her dismal performance or his open corrupt ways.
Either they are unable to review their performance dispas sionately or have succumbed to the hype created by the lo cal politician and are silently in awe of the politician, mak ing up their mind that there is nobody who can take his/ her place. Or is there some thing more sinister? It will be wrong to mention that all of Goa is enslaved to its politicians, because in Goa’s last elections there were some constituencies elected absolutely new indi viduals who entered without any political baggage. For example, the performance of the person representing the Benaulim constituency has been better than at least five of his predecessors. So the argument that only some individuals are meant to rep resent us means two things: either the sitting represent ative has not invested in ro bust systems that make him personally expendable in the long run or we have a rigid slave mindset that politics is meant for just a few specific individuals.
In short we have become slaves to our vote and never forced systems driven performance. If we want to bring about a change in our slave men tality we need to understand why people aim to become politicians in the first place. The first reason is that they want to take control of your money. Not the money you have in your bank or the as sets you have gathered over time, but the money you have paid as taxes on your income and expenditure. Although this money looks tiny when viewed from an individual taxpayer’s perspective, it adds up to be monstrously huge when you include the contribution of 1.48 billion citizens. Anyone having ac cess to this kind of money usually yields a lot of power and absolute power always corrupts. You might argue this tax money is for the upkeep of the nation for services ren dered by the government— absolutely true. However, when the ground reality does not match the amount of money collected it means the elected politician has failed in his duty and must leave. You cannot listen to political speeches, fall in love with the politician and then vote for the same individual because you have become a fan. You are doing a disservice to the nation because you have lost the ability to demand ac countability.
Remember the Swachh Bharat Cess the government collected, has the country be come as clean as Singapore? No, but we still have the same politicians at the helm who could not complete a simple task of cleanliness. This means we have become slaves to our politicians and are willing to overlook their non performance because we have now fallen for their aura and started justifying their non-performance. Our unnecessary worshiping of politicians is taking a toll on the country. Remember the tax money collected is huge and politi cians are not the only ones eyeing the kitty, there are crooked people who want to lay their hands on such a big pool of money. They prefer to stay below the ra dar, using politicians to get their illegal work done or change laws that will benefit their businesses. For these crooks it becomes impera tive that they have the same unchanged politician at the helm because any change in guard can be a setback to their crooked dealings and run the risk of getting ex posed. Above does not imply that every wannabe politician seeking entry into politics is clean and will automatically get our vote, especially those who enter by projecting themselves as ‘social work ers’ or saviours. Goans must reject social workers spend ing their own personal mon ey to take care of the State’s problems.
We pay more than sufficient taxes, which should cover the State’s expenses. Social workers spending their own money are merely treating that as seed capital to lay their hand on the big fat tax kitty once they get elected. The amount they spend on the socalled social work initiatives will be just a drop compared to the amount they will fleece from our tax kitty. ‘Vote Chori’ is the clear and present danger our country faces but Goa has been fac ing ‘vote slavery’ for too long and needs to be addressed on an urgent basis. If a vote is being stolen, it’s just a matter of time before the robbery comes to light, it cannot be brushed aside for too long. However, when citizens become slaves of politicians, it becomes deep-rooted and difficult to uproot. Goa to change its course will have to shun political slavery and start seeking accountability (The author is a business consultant).
