Leadership Crises

Receding of quality leadership may be a global phenomenon, but is getting worse in the biggest democracy of India.  India is suffering from quality leadership for almost six decades, though we do not expect every politician to be Mahathma Ghandi.  However, 2014 parliament election magnified the leadership crises more than ever.   Issue based politics is history now, and the politics is centered on personalities whose leadership quality is nowhere impressive in the context of country’s fundamentals and principles.

We have lots of politicians but hardly any leader in Indian politics.  No present politicians are graduating to leadership grade.  There are significant differences between leaders and politicians.  A leader should be beyond socio-political divisions and exercises his or her leadership to benefit all people of the country.  The leader serves to country without any expectations and not belongs to any particular group or community.  The leader exercises honesty and humility.  The leader push and pull the nation depends on the situation towards the progress.  The leader engages the people with values and principles. The leader blames him or her only for any failures and shares the success with all.  The leader delivers both emotional and rational expectations of people and finally he or she leaves the world with an impeccable positive foot print that could be never been replaced.

India has produced many such leaders and Ghandhi was the one.  His leadership process started with personal refinement and applied the same in public life.  He was struggling in all those years and was trying to bring his soul in its purest form before it can be returned to the Creator.  His objective of leadership is giving everything to others and takes nothing to keep his soul free from burdens.  His endurance and determination in liberating the soul made him the most feared individual in front of British Empire because he has nothing to lose.  He symbolized his personal freedom with national freedom struggle and exercised highest form of prayer that is political service to nation.    

Do we have any such leaders in Indian politics now?  The present leaders from all political parties are leading their own mass, community and groups.  They are sincere to own groups and want the driver seat of the country aiming to serve the mass or community that he or she belongs.  These politicians are embedded with divisive mindset nurtured at the nursery of party politics.  They have been trained to serve the party first and others next let alone serving the nation.    

In post independence era politicians have chosen to be remains politicians only, not leaders.  All politicians identified themselves with certain ideologies and firmly believed that their ideologies are best suitable to the nation.  While defending their ideologies, they become enemies of each other and left the larger objective of nation building at distance.  They chose to be extreme in advocating their ideologies and ready to go at any level to defend the same.   Later, the same political fraternity replaced those ideologies with personal ambitions and took the parties for their personal growth and benefits.  Today, we see full of political personalities whose objective and priority is power and money.  A destructive political culture is emerged and practiced by all political parties and made the common men and women to believe in the destructive political culture by propagating in media with money power.

While Congress propels the hypocrite leaderships at top level to protect dynasty politics and have successfully removed the quality leadership in its hierarchy.  A system is developed with careful monitor and measurements at all level.  Congress built their fort with fear and insecurity as the prime movers where each and every one become a spy and report to high command.  All party members and leaders are encouraged to worship the Nehru family for their survival and progress within the party.   

The late entrant is BJP and downgraded their status from a team based organization to personality based cult politics.  Vajpayee and Advani, the two tall leaders of BJP brought the party from two members to a ruling position were never encouraged the personality cult within the party.  Today, by elevating Modi as PM candidate, the party submitted their will to Modi’s personality and looking to his talisman magic to bring them to power.  In short term, it may be a good dream and beneficial to them, but in long term they destroyed the foundations of BJP.  Threat to any establishment always comes within and destroys the very foundations.  It is beginning of destruction for BJP. 

Regional leaders are crippled with regional priorities and yet to be proved at national level.  Perhaps, after election we may witness few regional politicians arriving at national politics, but they will remain politicians to protect their interest than becoming a leader acceptable by all.

Why we have end up with leadership crises?  Where are our values?  What brought us to this pathetic situation?  How can we to restore our great civilization that taught the value of humanity and shares knowledge and wisdom with others?

To answer, we need to look at ourselves only.  Yes, it is we the people failed to produce quality leaders by accepting their substandard without questioning any.  The people’s non-participation of government process brought us down.  There is no effective monitoring system to check the accountability and responsibility of governance.  The existing autonomous institutions barring Judicial system is made to serve the political leaders whims and fancies.  Media become part of the political game and failed to perform its duty towards nation.  We failed to build a people’s monitoring system.   We the people trusted the political leaderships of the country assuming that they are truthful and carrying forward the legacy of pre independence leadership characteristics.   We the people disconnected from the politics and took a long vacation after independence.  In fact, we allow them to cheat us.   We created masters and subservient to them.  Now, we found in deep crises of stupidity where we found ourselves conflicting with numerous arguments and failed to understand the gravity of destruction that we are in.

We need to change.  Young India must rise up and break the foundation of destructive and retrogressive political culture to bury them once for all.  We learned the lessons and know how to build our nation with proper checks and balances.   It all can start with active participation of our country’s political administration.  Active political participation by people and selecting good and right people is essential to change the system and bring quality leaders.  Let us start the process now.  India needs people’s participation more than ever and failing to respond her call will sink our nation in much deeper crises.