It doesn’t matter who we are. Not even our nationality. Irrespective of any factor, at one point of our lives or another, we have criticized politics and politicians. It might have been for corruption, might have been for lack of action, might have been for their choice of clothing. But It has been done and every single one of us enjoyed doing it, either openly or within ourselves.
Why shouldn’t we? Basically politicians are there to perform based on certain expectations we have from them. But, there is a problem. They aren’t.
What if I tell you, that they aren’t the one doing all of it? or any of it in fact.
Let me break it down and begin from the grassroots.
If you look at the social situation around yourself, in the present time or in any period of time since the beginning of the comprehension of time by humanity, society has structured itself in a particular way, as delightfully elucidated by models like Maslow’s hierarchy etc. Civilization works on delegation, from the smallest units such as family to something as massive as a country. You do not have to agree with me. Observe.
In a family, there is always someone who is good at doing certain something that needs to be done. Sometimes the skills overlap, but its mostly person exclusive. Even if its not, certain responsibilities are favored by certain people to be delegated to certain people, even themselves. Like my sister does the cleaning in the house, because she is the most dust intolerant. I like to fill water bottles so I mostly do it. My dad is brilliant with documents so he maintains all our files and documents. My mother does the cooking because she is brilliant at it. And so on. Whenever any one of us is unable to do what they respectively do for whatsoever reason, we do point it out as constructive criticism, and join in with suggestions or help towards fulfilling the same.
Now these are tasks and preferences which we have had a lot of time to develop. An organisation works similarly, just the process of selection of the person responsible differs and so do the people who can make that selection. In a business organisation, such decisions are made mostly by the management or people directly responsible for the growth and improvement of the organisation on a higher scale than an individual employee. The reason behind that is, their performance is evaluated on the basis of the performance of the candidate they hire. The candidate gets paid anyways, and even if they chose to fire him, they incur the cost of the salary combined with the expense of the entire recruitment and separation process. So in short, the candidate is selected by someone who is directly affected by how good the candidate is.
The process gets slightly drawn out when you are dealing with something as massive as government. A government is nothing but an organisation whose responsibility is to govern you. Do you realize what that means?
It means that a government is something that we chose to create because we do not have faith on ourselves to exist as individuals with absolute power over our own lives, excluding natural factors. And the head of the government is someone who oversees and ensures the successful and smooth operation of the government. Someone who is responsible for seeing the big picture and then making the decisions. In our country, that position is held by the Prime Minister.
Now, let us take an example.
Suppose you cook. There are certain problems or hindrances in the process usually, like the gas not igniting in one try, or a drop of oil hitting your hand, or some ingredient spilling over, or some food getting spoiled etc etc. Now imagine, every time such a problem occurs, a person who is observing you, stops your entire process, goes to your father/mother/any other member of the family, brings them to the kitchen and asks them to fix the problem without telling them anything else. Would either of you be able to fulfill your responsibilities, even if you want to do those tasks and are not doing them because you are supposed to?
The answer is no.
Don’t get me wrong. By no means am I telling you to not question authority. If anything, you have every right to do so because you have placed them in that position of power. But just like questioning is your right, supporting and trying to see the truth or vision behind certain actions is your duty, along with creating minimal hindrances on the possible path of growth for which you had elected them in the first place.
Because it is not them who are doing it wrong.
It is you.
Sounds offensive? Here’s why.
For every one of us who sits on their armchairs with just the right idea about what is to be done, without actually doing anything to see it being done other than complain over a cup of tea, we shun our right to deserve anything better than what is there already. For every one of us who doesn’t stand up for what they believe in, rather wait for someone else to do it, we acknowledge our inability to know any better.
For each one of us who says “All politicians are same”, we deserve no different.
Although now I am aware that there were movies of Byomkesh stories much before my time, at that point of time it was something new and novel to me. With some anticipation, I watched the movie. And I liked it. I had imagined that no one could come close to the accuracy of the DD1 series, but Anjan Dutta had managed it with Abir as Byomkesh and Saswata “Bob Biswas” Chatterjee as Ajit. The movie looked as good as it felt. I had one more page to add to my treasured Byomkesh scrapbook.
So, you can imagine my thoughts when I heard that a bollywood movie was in the making. To say the least I was defensive. My fear doubled when I heard that they had cast Sushant Singh Rajput, the romantic newcomer for the role. After that, the motion poster arrived with the painful soundtrack. Then, the action packed, scantily clad women laden trailer with Sushant in all his mono-brow glory. I am not saying that I have listed down his characteristic features from the book, but nowhere do I remember Byomkesh to have a mono-brow or look idiotic. I mean, Where were the glasses? Anyways, thanks to my sister’s persistence, I finally got to seeing it.
That is because it will always be the “Bakery” in my head, I never knew it’s name and somehow that is the charm of the place for me. And also that it sold Black Forest cakes. (Ofcourse not authentic ones from Europe, but knowing that name back then, let alone actually selling a cake with that name, is something to be given credit for). That bakery was, is and always will occupy a happy place in my memories.
Arnab Mukherjee 