No Celebration For The Festival Of Democracy

The election fever is soaring in the country with no one but politicians and media people going crazy over the supposed festival of democracy. Though they always find a reason to bellow through microphones, the season of election gives them a particularly bizarre energy. The powerful become vulnerable and the forbidden questions resurface.

For the past one month I am being bombarded with advertisements and promises of Utopian worlds and fears of broken ones. I get calls from Arvind Kejriwal himself telling me what my problems are; Narendra Modi hopefully looks at me with innocent eyes from every web-page that I open. Suddenly everyone is a well-wisher.

As an example, someone allegedly(they told me) from Aam Aadmi Party called me to inform me about my name being struck off the electoral roll. Though I was skeptic from the beginning, I played along and asked what I should do. The person at the other end told me not to worry in a completely mechanical tone, as if he had said the same to a thousand others, as Arvind Kejriwal is fighting for my cause and will not breathe until my name is restored.

A few days later I get another call telling me we have won the battle and that my name has been restored in the electoral roll. All this made me wonder if these people really are from Aam Aadmi Party, as they claim, how is BJP not doing anything to stop such malpractices, especially when they are not done by BJP itself.

And to not much surprise, the next day, I receive a text message from Election Commission itself to not trust any calls claiming deletion of names from the electoral roll.

But all this mad screaming, sloganeering, tough questions and the oozing emotion of public service seems all well-rehearsed and charade-like. Like there must be a green room where our leaders look into the mirror and correct their expressions while they read off from a script of promises.

It is not even revolutionary to say this because it is common knowledge. In fact, the revolution we all were waiting for is absolutely impossible. Simply because we all are products of our environment. And so are our leaders, BJP or INC or AAP or anyone. All the parties are made up of the same set of peoples.

They are aware that the only way to be more powerful than others to confiscate power from more and more people and concentrate it at one place. And we have ourselves made this system of few benefiting from the many. We ourselves have deliberately kept ourselves weak simply because it gives us a hope of overpowering everyone some day.

We have created for ourselves this system of inequality because deep within we hope to be at the top of the pyramid some day. We hate the cut-throat competition all around us but crave for the rewards it promises.

And out of this system has arisen our leaders and guides who have ruthlessly worked their way through bullies and exploiters to be at the top of their games. They crawled slowly and steadily to become the beneficiaries of the charade of public service. So, it obviously is futile to expect a revolution from the political class.

The change that is promised before every election can only come from the people. And I do not talk of changing ourselves to change the world bullshit. I talk of being active; being skeptic; and building a judgment. We have to realize the fact that education, wealth, beauty or even a particular skill have nothing to do with human complexity. Till the time we don’t give up on our follow-or-lead mentality and accept equality, we can not expect the revolution we seek and the festival of democracy would remain like women’s day celebration for sex slaves.