Product of politics sans values

Kerala is going through a political phase with its Left government under Pinarayi Vijayan drawing flak for many of its actions. Most recently, the raid by VACB in the offices of Kerala State Financial Enterprises (KSFE) led to an intervention by the ruling party CPM's state secretariat and exposed a schism existing between the chief minister and his colleague and finance minister Thomas Isaac. The allegations against the Pinaryi government, do undoubtedly have more to it than what is made out by the government – that it is a mere political propaganda by the opposition and certain media entities in the backdrop of the local body elections due within two weeks and the state assembly elections due in a few months hence. Quite disturbingly for the Left government, the KSFE charges come closely on the heels of other more damaging cases being investigated about the planned and ingeniously mobilised gold smuggling using diplomatic channels. There are legitimate complaints that different investigating agencies of the Modi government at the Centre have been trying to corner the state government with political goals, but at the same time the Vigilance and Anti-corruption Bureau (VACB) which ultimately reports to the chief minister, conducted a raid into a non-banking financial institution of the state government. And that was the point of concern finance minister Thomas Isaac raised.

Although his party can temporarily silence Isaac, the doubts created among the people will certainly not die down that easily. The left government had romped home into power with a huge majority on the back of the promise of a clean governance free of corruption and big scams. The very slogan of the front's poll campaign was that everything would be set right. Now questions are being raised why that government, as it faces a scrutiny of its rule at the hustings, has to go to the people with a sullied image. However, there is also the truth that on the Opposition side, some of their legislators and prominent leaders are either in jail or under police custody facing charges of serious corruption. Although their leaders do attribute political motives to the clampdown, the people are not prepared to take that argument as such.

It is high time that we searched for answers to the questions why our politics and government machinery, in fact the entire public life, has got so rotten only to degenerate every morning showing no signs of improving. It concerns everyone since this deterioration is happening at the expense of tax payers' money. No one has any illusion that those who rule at the centre or constituent governments in the states, bear virtues of dedication, responsibility and clean character. Let alone the fact that neither leaders nor their followers set any model for the growing young generation, their actions are consistently marked by fraud and misdeeds, with no bar on their getting away with taxpaers' money, extravagance or waste of public money. Investigating agencies, law and order machinery, and even courts are helpless before them and are ineffective. Paradoxically, the more stringent our laws and punishment become, the stronger the financial offences and other violations. If any one tries to take a count of criminals, law-breakers, fraudsters and corrupt ones among candidates in the upcoming local bodies' election, he will be in for a shock. And the headcount is extended to bureaucracy ranging from IAS level to the lowest rung, the less said the better.

The simple answer to the question why it happens so is that we have a created a social ambience where moral, ethical and humanitarian values have no appeal or sway in social life as much as in personal. Under the cover of secular conception of making politics free from religion, the country has come to build a socio-political milieu entirely shorn of values. Leaders who work overtime for secularism, stigmatising anything opposing it as theocracy, are in fact finding solace and justification for their lives deprived of any values worth the name. But they conveniently forget the historical fact that none of advocates of materialistic ideologies, trying to open the doors of progress and solution of people's problems while negating at a fundamental level the moral-ethical and social values taught by religions, have ever succeeded in their goals. The significance and essence of the plain-speaking by Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Nation that 'there can be no politics without religion', is still lost on them. Or, even if they grasp its sense, they are afraid that once they embrace it, they will have to close shop and leave.