The Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh has once again come to a standstill. With nearly around 100 MLAs resigning from their posts and calling on a region-wide bandh, the region has joined the choir to voice the platitudinous jingle of ‘Telangana – The State’. As I flipped through the headlines in the newspaper, a quote by Charles de Gaulle caught my attention as it said: “In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant”.

Charles de Gaulle may not have lived up to witness the political fracas going on, but his words have certainly transcended the boundaries of time and space! The sheer moral decadence prevalent among today’s ruling class has reduced the concept of democracy to a joke making the bystanders go on a laughing spree due to the pricking anguish sensed while hearing it!

The Indian federation has been built on the strong foundation of democratic values and principles wherein, the power holders swear by the Holy Constitution to live up to all the reasonable just and moral expectations, and to stand by the Constitutional values and principles. But, are today’s civil ‘servants’ living up to their words? Are they really ‘serving’ the society? Or are they serving themselves?!

The Directive Principles of State Policy have laid down clear cut guidelines to be followed by the government in order to establish a welfare society. Though they are expressly stated to be non-justiciable, various case-laws have held them to be going hand in hand with the Fundamental Rights, so that the government knows not only the things it should not be doing, but it also knows exactly what it must consciously be doing!

But in today’s scenario, the government has forgotten that there is certain Rule of the Land which is in turn governed by the Rule of the Higher Law, which governs the entire governance process! There is this thing happening in Karnataka that the people in power do not want Heritage tag to a landmark Tiger Reserve because they sense a grave danger to the ‘development’ in the region. The increasing incidents of rapes and sexual assaults in Uttar Pradesh have ploughed the land for various political parties to sow their respective seeds of justifications and defences of their ‘laws and functionaries in place’, and of ‘modest mud-slinging in the interest of the public good’. If the opposition parties all over India are so very concerned about the unending vagaries of the common man, why don’t they initiate development programmes with their funds? Doesn’t a participative democracy come to fruition only when the civil society (not to mean the non-political class!) goes hand in hand with the Ruling Party? Just because the party which is not ‘Ruling’ is termed the ‘Opposition’ party, it does not mean that it always has to stand in stiff ‘opposition’ to everything the ruling party does (and does not). This time it is the Ruling party and the next time it will no doubt be the Opposition party which will be accountable to the public at large.  And the Opposition parties need to bear in mind that they have not been named, God forbid, as “Accusation Party” or “Mud-slinging Party” for a very well-settled, apt and a reasonable reason! And also, the “Ruling” Party is not supposed to become a de facto “Bossing” Party and try to become a vigilante of sorts. Democracy knows no one above the law, and no one can ever take well established precepts of governance on a ride.

The status quo  makes us realize every moment that no doubt it is we who elect our ‘representatives’, but many a time, such representatives of ours elect themselves as ‘self-representatives’, in the lines of “Self-service is the best service”!

We find them hem and haw, crib and croon, over a chronic lack of funds in giving out welfare subsidies to the poor, malnourished and the disabled, but their pockets are seen full with gems and jewels when it comes to hosting international sports events, or giving out tax holidays to multi-national corporate firms – both domestic and foreign.

Now, are you sensing a prolonged bashing and thrashing of the political class by an equally wronged commoner here? Kudos to your senses! No doubt the political class has, since times immemorial, been this same nasty way every possible where in the world (I remember once having read that more than some 90% of Canadians feel that all the politicians of their country need to be stacked and bolted in a car, and dropped down from the Niagara Falls!), but do I, with all this Oh-so-commonly-heard chastisements of the Incredible Indian Politician, realize my own duty towards my Nation?

I know I have not yet realized it in its entirety. I guess it is the same with a majority of us. We have the ‘courage’ to ‘like’ the cause of ‘A Strong Lok Pal’ or ‘India against Corruption’ on Facebook, but we get stuck in the same old quagmire when we go to get our driving licenses, or our Voter’s ID. Do we even try to have the guts to say ‘NO’ to bribe? In the future, when this entire hullabaloo surrounding a morally upright society and a corruption-free government would have died down and we would have grown up into responsible lawyers in this society, will we have the moral clarity to refuse bribing the marriage registrar to get our marriages registered? Will we say NO to bribe for the registration of our first plot of land?

Oh No! Let us not go so deep into the future! Will we as conscientious law students, STOP copying in exams? Will we STOP plagiarising our friends’ intellectual property or for that matter, our own works (publishing the same work of ours again and again is said to be self-plagiarism!)? Will we STOP shying away from our responsibilities in the capacities of the Conveners, Editors, or the Class Representatives?

Or, will we go against the President of the Student Parliament if he/she has done something wrong or has not done which they ought to have done? We alone are the architects of the answers to these questions!

My dear friends, this blog post might appear long and prolix, and some may find it annoying and boring too, but let us not forget that, a life lived for the sake of the classical values in life, is a life worth lived! Eons may come,  and eons may go, but the values we hold dear to our hearts will live forever! And nothing can be a greater reward one gets for such a timeless steadfastness!

May God bless all of us with sagacity! Amen.