REMEMBERING LOKPAL BILL AND DEMONETIZATION





“You are too naive,” this man told me today morning, “You don’t understand how politics works.”

Why did he say that to me?

Because I had wondered, while having our casual discussion about yesterday’s BMC voting: “Arey yaar… I was thinking how would these candidates spend money for their campaign? Where will the cash come from? How will they go ‘digital’, survive without cash? Will they have to pay everyone involved in the campaign only through Paytm or by cheque etc, etc?”

“Did you observe what the difference was during this campaign?” this person asked me, “Highest amount was spent during this campaign… Cash flew like water. Never before was a BMC election fought by the parties and their candidates so aggressively and on such a grand scale.”

Yes, I had observed that. I have been in Mumbai for over thirty-seven years now. Never ever have I seen a corporation election fought so aggressively and on such a grand scale…

And, yes, it has made me wonder: “Whatever happened to the grand objective of Demonetization?”

My wonderment gets even more crazier when I go back to those initial days of Demonetization, when this person – who now tags me as ‘too naive and ignorant of how politics works’, a typical ‘bakht’ of Demonetization – now makes me feel that I have been a ‘fool’ all along…

Which, anyway, I am...

I don’t know about you... about others!

I remember another fantabulous idea - ‘Lokpal Bill’! It was pitched up to be a ‘permanent-remedy’ for our nation’s ailment called ‘corruption’!  It was the first and the last time I heard about it… and it was when the grand-old-crusader Anna Hazare (of course aided by none other than Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi) made me conscious that such a vocabulary existed in the political and social dictionary, if not in the medical one!

I wonder today: “Whatever happened to that?”

The problem with sentimental fools like me is this: we think, when a person like Amjal Kasab is hanged, the terrorism in our country would end… and when a person like Shashikala or Jayalalitha are sent to prison (or die), the corruption in our country would be wiped off… Yes, that is our problem!

And, that’s why this person seriously thinks, that I am too naive and I do not understand how politics works…

How can he be wrong?

GERALD D’CUNHA
Pic.: Anil Bedi

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