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Dear friends, Holding public positions is a privilege. Holding them with grace is a challenge.

Holding them with a vision is an opportunity and holding them without reason is a shame. Public positions essentially provide a platform to perform, a stepping stone to a rise, a cause for success, a point to step forward and a basis to excel. In addition to that public positions place many restrictions, build boundaries, give limitations, create insecurities, involve risks and pose perpetual threats of many kinds. Public positions increase power, give authority, provide legitimacy, enhance the influence and create an aura. The public positions involve fierce competition, continuous engagement, disciplined postures, regular follow-ups, vigilant behavior, perennial communication, and untiring efforts. Besides public positions require a lot of arduous hard work, close watch, apparent selflessness, and readiness for others, patient listening, uninterrupted inputs, and fundamental understanding of the structures, systems and people. Therefore, people in public positions attract high respect and regards; are expected to be exceptionally honest; are considered to be the role models; are followed by large numbers; and are revered like GOD in a country like ours. This is why any mistake committed by the people in high public positions regarded to be totally unacceptable howsoever habitual the followers may be of committing the same mistake. The present scenario of Indian politics has to be considered and understood in this background. People in high public positions have necessarily been exposed to large section of society by our 24x7 media. The people are supposed to demonstrate highest moral standards and to appear to be above board. Their integrity, honesty, impartiality, accountability, commitment and trustworthiness have to incomparable and matchless. Whenever, there is any doubt on their actions for any of the aforesaid reasons, their persona becomes vulnerable and susceptible to criticism and the aura begins vanishing and fading fast. That may also be a sign of evasion of their authority and legitimacy along with lessening power and loosening control over the masses. This is symptomatic of the crisis that has engulfed our present day political authority both at central and state levels. This is the main reason behind decreasing faith of the people in politicolegal frameworks and structures. Also the general mass is gradually becoming abhorrent of the political class and there is a substantially significant presence of a sense of total disregard for political system. The inefficient public delivery, inappropriate planning mechanisms, the ineffective policy implementation, the inactive institutions, the inapt functionaries, the inadequate resources, the inordinate delay in development projects, the unaccountable bureaucratic edifice, the intolerable red-tapism, the burgeoning grassroot corruption, the improper local government machinery, the invisible state authority, the increasing inertia in the intelligentsia, the ill-conceived legal frameworks, the illiberal power structures, the ignorant representatives, the ill-breed political recruitment, the immature heir-apparent, the immodest leaders, the inapplicable rules, the irrelevant procedures and the inhospitable attitude of public servants are some of the important reasons behind the irresistible insurgence in various quarters of political community and social networks. The insensitivity towards public demands may lead

to increased inclination towards indiscreet insubordination that has by now become the insignia of irreversible public movement throughout the world. In this backdrop, the people holding public positions and higher offices are required to not only lead from the front but also appear to be actually leading. Their infallibility has be maintained and kept intact. Their whole-hearted surrender to the public cause has to be demonstrated and exhibited. Their intensive care for the public good has to be substantiated with hard facts and ruthless critical enquiry. And all this cannot be based on sheer pretentions for long time because communication revolution has, despite its now well-known shortcomings and shameful failures, made the dissemination of information faster, easier and simpler, thereby enabling certain people to create directed or calculated public opinion by way of using the information to their favour and converting the media into propaganda machinery. So, in a scenario of popular media being available for both use and misuse by prudent players that be, the leadership has to be cautions and vigilant. The cry that our parliament is supreme; the weeping that external forces are behind these unstablizing groups; the lament that democracy is being threatened by extraneous pressures; and the preposterous propaganda against dissenting people will do no good to the ruling class except for making them seamless, spineless, worthless and useless in public eyes. The restoration of belief and faith of the people in the political system and the political structures is essentially needed not only for the survival and sustenance of the Indian democracy but also for the retrieval of the lost pride in this so-called vibrant and resilient democratic system of ours. There is no denying the fact that these over-criticized groups of people in political class are extensively reflective of the profile and character of our own houses, families, colonies, villages, towns, cities, regions, religions, castes, communities, professions, peer-groups and so on. Our representatives would necessarily represent our merits and demerits, our strengths and weakness, and our abilities and inabilities. They would be adopting corrupt practices sometimes for their own good and sometimes to favour their followers. They would have been approached by some of us for one or the other favour that is usually out of rules. They would have helped us sometimes to get somebody accused for a heinous crime released from a police station because of their power and influence; sometimes by getting somebody near to us transferred; sometimes getting placement orders for some of us; and sometimes getting out of turn favours for some of us. Thus, some of them might have been brought into or conditioned to malpractices by some of us also. This is not to suggest that all the wrong doings of our political leaders are because of us but surely some of their misadventures may be attributed as public services. The point I wish to make is that although there are issues of serious concern in our public political sphere and there are fast growing visible tendencies of discomfort with the political class, yet this does not absolve us of our responsibilities. So as invigorate new life and strength to our political system, we have to have a re-look on our development model, on our social interplay, on our political priorities, on our ethical foundations, on our cultural base, on our economic requirements and on our national goals. And, I am sure that this would require some

interminable introspection and intriguing self-questioning in terms of our own actions as citizens of this wonderful nation with a chequered history of more than five thousand years and with an accomplished civilization of versatile excellence. Being proud of our past should not mean being indignant with the present rather it should mean being inquisitive about the future. The past glory should show us the path of future exhilaration as the ancient Indian poet says:-

nf{k.ks vkfgr% d`ra es nf{k.ks gLrs t;ks es lO; vkfgr%


9th august 2011 Meerut

(Sanjeev Kumar Sharma)

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