A billion Indians will to elect political leaders who will govern them for next five years. Do these netas understand the immense faith and trust that the people of India place in them? Are they capable to live up to peoples? expectations?

ELECTION 2009 is not some circus. It is an election of a government, which will preside over the destiny of a billion people of India. Indian polity is placing their future, their well being, their security as also the destiny of their children in the hands of these select few who will be the their link with the country they belong to and their aspirations of what their country should be. Do our netas really understand the immense responsibility being placed on their shoulders and are they capable of handling it ?

    
It is most unfortunate that even after sixty years of democracy in the country, the current breed of netas have learned nothing about the basic traits of leadership. They preach what they themselves do not do practice and expect that the public will listen to them. Recently lot of them have filed their nomination papers for Elections ’09. One streak which runs common to most of these nomination papers are that almost all of them are underplaying their wealth. After being in politics for decades, so many top leaders who have filled in their nomination forms have declared that they do not even own a car or a house. Probably they feel that public is such a fool that they will believe it? The biggest irony is that when they come to file these papers, large cavalcade of most expensive of cars accompany them. Even the most uninitiated in India knows that election costs the candidates cores of rupees. So why hide the truth? Why not declare the fact ‘Yes I have got the money and that is why I will be less corrupt’. May be the public will appreciate this candidness.
    

The current elections are for the selection of central leadership, which will be deciding the future policies, which India will follow in international forum, and of national issues. It will affect the country as whole. It is pathetic that most of these netas who want to get elected to the hot seat are talking about Dalit, OBC, caste and creed equations, making of temple and what have you. None of them are seriously talking about the burning national issues like terror, corruption, the current ongoing recession, Taliban knocking at the gates of India, the demoralised armed forces, the shrinking of job opportunities in organised and unorganised sectors, etc. Those few who do touch upon these are so uninformed that they are at loss to explain how will they achieve the desired results. What is even more jarring is to see a cycle perched on top of a spanking new Tata Safari car or for that matter a hurricane lamp hanging on a brightly lit stage of the netaji rally, just because they are election symbols. Why can not these symbols be modernised to depict progress and modern thought? Maybe cycle becomes a motorcycle and lantern gives way to solar-lit lamps.
   
Every political party, whether national, regional or a one-man show have come out with election manifestos promising moon to people. The politicians who prepare these dream manifestos themselves know that it will not be possible for them to deliver if they come to power. So why prepare manifestos, which are impossible to implement? Cases in point are those political parties who were part of current ruling coalition. They are silent on those issues, which they had promised in 2004 and did not implement. Why should it not be made mandatory for these political parties to first explain to people their inability to act on previous promises before making new ones? To ensure that these manifestos do not become a joke and bundle of lies, time has come now for a law to be enacted where people should have a right to file a PIL with election commission or appropriate court making a political party accountable for non implementation of their manifestos.
   
In modern India, which is already a major economic power, and on the way to become super power, one thought that the politician fighting elections would summon the services of experts in various fields to share the dais with them in their political rallies. Unfortunately in India there is such bankruptcy of ideas that they still bank on film stars and item girls to get votes for them.
 
It is true. There is a saying that in democracy people get the government they deserve. May be the time has come for people of India in Elections 09 to tell the world and the political parties that they deserve better and it is time for netajis to wake up!