The Political Curtain
I’m politically honest (oops! Was that an oxymoron!!!) All my idea about politics is the way I see it in my college- for nothing other than power! And all I do as a common voter is choose the best among the worst!
College politics- one of those very favorite things to debate upon!! How can the country progress without the youth thinking of politics? Why should you sell off your youth to a dirty thing like politics?
It is useless to define what politics is- we all are intelligent enough to check the dictionaries. But do you realize how important the State is? I came to think of it when, in my first year of college a senior told me, “You don’t exist if the state chooses to not let you exist!”
When we are born, the State confirms our birth, hands over the Birth Certificate. We get in to school, we pass out. The State certifies that we are literate. We find a job, the State says that we earn more than what we need and therefore should give up something. We get married- yet again the State affirms that. We die- but we are dead only when the State officially hands over our death certificates. So you can cease to exist without dying if the State chooses to. And ultimately who whips this horse? The political leaders chosen by us, the democratic people of India!!!
And we say running a State is a joke? No way!! But unfortunately thinking of politics today, all that I know is what I see in my college.
Being under the Communist rule ever since birth, I shouldn’t have seen much of tension. West Bengal is politically, the most stable state in the country. You may wonder whether I’m anti-industrialization, talking against Tata’s car factory or speaking up against the violence in Nandigram. I am neither a democratic maven nor the Marxist saint; I cannot comment on policy implications or send out judgments about what these two particular events had to do with the Communist rule. I am a small entity.
My college has always been politically active. I didn’t know why till I joined. I wondered why Students’ Federation of India (SFI), never approached me in spite of the party members knowing that I come from a communist family. I found out very soon- all the active SFI members are muscle men who can bulldoze down the opposition. All that they needed from me was the vote- better not let me see the dirty politics that they play behind the curtain. I was the most confused soul on the Election Day…
College elections- CPM backed SFI have the right to bring in people from other colleges to beat up the opposition. They fail to recognize classmates whom they have studied with for a whole year, they steal away the strategy sheets of the opposition, they call up confirmed voters and threat them, frighten their families so that the students cannot even come out to vote! In spite of that they fail to win the elections. They fight, they demand a re-poll, and they say that the opposition rigged, arrange for attendance registers from the University long after the working hours are over and don’t allow the panel election to come through before a month is over!
What about the so highly sought after opposition, Independence Consolidation, IC, who seem to win the election doing nothing? I’ve nothing to say about them because they don’t do anything except the passion to make a change! They hardly have any organization. They don’t have a mother party helping them beat up people and bag the votes. They aren’t even good liars! Poor them!!
In the devastating state that Indian politics is in, even this much honesty would go ways to help us achieve the Indian dream. But that is really a distant dream- after all what do we students understand of politics? What can the youth do? And incidentally, by the time they are old enough to make an impact, unfortunately, the common citizen’s psychic phenomena will turn them corrupt enough as well. After all, we live in India!
So, do we, the youth, bid a good bye to our political dream and just end up being a statistic in census?
Perhaps we should now go and look up on the dictionary as to how politics is exactly defined!
Authored By Sudeshna Sen, India