Need of the hour

At present we see acrimonious, vituperative and vendetta politics everywhere from the national level to local politics in India and it becomes a new normal to hear the verbal accusations and trading charges against each other. As a result, political culture has come to the lowest ebb. Leadership in India at once known for its simplicity, dedication, maturity, and compassion. Now it is bereft of decency and decorum. Competitively, the leaders through their behaviour and action let down the image of India. There is no logical, political, and ideological discourses in the public platform. Party men and women have been oriented to follow the political leaders and as a result, we find politics always disruptive and indecent to the core. People are in despair, wrath, hopeless and helplessness due to pandemic politics and COVID-19. In the name of debate in the electronic media, one could see only a street fight on the screen. Decent and parliamentary words are only in the dictionary, not in practice while political discourse is on in the media. In order to accuse the ruling establishment, the opposition parties attack by using abusive language and equally and more powerfully, the ruling political establishment attacks the opposition parties and leaders by magnifying their misdeeds. Social media is being used to confuse people by providing false data by both the ruling and opposition parties. No more social media is social and it is being engaged for manipulation through incentives.

No one could realise why MK Gandhi treated 'truth' as god and it is being realised how valuable it is in the present context since politics is being performed on the basis of 'untruth'. The whole thesis of MK Gandhi rests on truth and nonviolence. But in Gandhi's land, truth and nonviolence are in dogmas not in practice. Parliamentary democracy has been brought to a stage beyond redemption. Beyond this level, it cannot move. India needs a new paradigm of politics to rest on truth and nonviolence.

First, a new consciousness has to be created as done by MK Gandhi in India after his arrival from South Africa in 1915. He consciously created a new consciousness among the masses with a hope of transforming them from despair to hope. He prepared the masses for a non-violent struggle and to have a dialogue with the British to resolve the problems. There is no shortcut to dialogue to resolve the disputes and controversies. MK Gandhi has exhibited a high level of maturity to resolve the disputes through a process of dialogue and he practised it till his end. But in Gandhi's land, one could see a parochial politics of scheming and manipulating without adherence to values namely truth and non-violence.

A country cannot achieve economic growth in a conflicting social setting. When England decided to move away from the European Union, the Chancellor of Germany lamented that strengthening of the European Union is not to protect the currency Euro but to save the continent from conflict and war as Europe has witnessed for 100 years. The whole of Europe achieved prosperity only during peace after the war. There is a close relationship between peace and prosperity. The theory of democracy also argues that the promotion of democracy enables society to achieve development. Democracy lies not only in holding elections and carrying out governance activities. It is much more than what we see today in politics. Harmonising society and humanising the state are also the functions of democracy. To perform the above the political parties have to join together to resolve

the disputes through a matured dialogue. By emitting

venom in their arguments in political platforms, political parties are knowingly and unknowingly poisoning the entire body of politics and resisting reason and maturity to act on issues.

When there was an intense debate over the language policy of the government in a more acrimonious way in electronic and social media, a veteran Gandhian asked me what language we want for our country. Is it not the language of peace, the language of love, and the language of compassion needed he asked. So the need of the hour is a new consciousness. All transformative changes have been achieved in human society only by changing the consciousness of the people. Be it independence or social transformation or economic transformation, it was possible only through changing the consciousness of the people by the leaders. But the leaders should have the capacity to instil confidence in the minds of the people. The nation is superior to our political parties and leaders. The people are the sovereign rather than the state as all have to serve the people.

To make our leaders meet and to have dialogue, our public intellectuals have to join together to create a consciousness. Our political class has to have face to face conversation by keeping mutual faith and respect. For a meaningful dialogue, political leaders should speak on truth and facts. When acceptable solutions are on sight based on truth and facts, the leaders should have the maturity to accept the same. All our political leaders are victims of the circumstance and hence, we the public intellectuals instead of taking a position, make our leaders start a dialogue to resolve by keeping truth and scientific facts. Can we do it?

The writer is a former Professor and Rajiv Gandhi Chair for Panchayati Raj Studies, Gandhigram Rural Institute. Views expressed are personal