Sunday, July 6, 2008

Good politician- Is this a new dinosaur discovered ???

I am just thinking about the future of democracy and how it is
going to survive in the 21st century and benefit the society. Someone told me that one essential ingredient in a healthy democracy is a good politician which has been missing today in India and perhaps in USA. I have mentioned India because I am an Indian and USA because it is the most powerful democracy and perhaps a model democracy.
So I am in search of a good politician. But before we venture out to find the specimen we must know what the attributes of a good politician are. Now good is a very broad word so I define him/her like this-
· Popular because without that he is not useful
· He must be wise and educated (1st is essential but 2nd is not)
· He must be a visionary
· He must have some achievable goal for the social benefits
· He must be a good executioner of his plan so that he would be able to implement it.
· He must be a good leader. He must be able to carry people with him and convince them of the goal. he must be able to take blame upon himself when things go wrong and must give all the credit to his team when go right.
· He must not be afraid to call that he has done wrong or blundered and must have the courage to take blame.
· He must be able to stand in the face of adversity.
Now let us find him, where do we start? Let us start with our state and
Central legislature because we find all successful leaders there (successful not good) and do we see him .ok what about the leader of ruling party and leader of the opposition parties? Do we find him? Yes but not all the features/attributes are matching. Why, may be because we have forced them to shed some of the characteristic. Ok so how many good leaders we have found out? Less than 15% -20%. That is pathetic .but why, may be the reason lies in their origination place and that is the society, Am I right? I think so because you see today’s society wants people to be successful and not good. So u will see people trying ruthlessly to be successful and not good. How many of you have been told by your parents to be good? Chances are nil or negligible but how many of you have been told to be successful, chances are almost all. So see, they are not to be blamed, all they want to be successful.

Now how to find a good leader? The answer lies in the society. Either change the way our democracy works today because it works in the assumption that what ever persons are coming to become lawmakers, all of them are good. But in reality they are there because they are successful. So we need to have checks and balances in place to ensure that they work within a certain parameter and will do some good because doing good will make them successful and that will force them to be good. Or change the emphasis on goodness and less on success, so that people will be driven towards goodness.
Waiting for your inputs on the subject matter so that we can debate more and may be find out an implement able solution.

1 comment:

Ravi Kumar said...

I would rather use "powerful" rather than "successful". And politics is the last refuge for the powerful to flaunt their power and amplify them. I dont see any harm as long as a politician is from a particular party. The party has a manifesto and the politician has to abide by it no matter what is his personal idisyncracies. The people must vote for a party and not the politician. Thats why democracy is so safe. Atleast better than all other political framework. It will make any monster behave well.