Who builds the nation?

In a rich political culture, the rulers can ignore the valued opinions and criticisms of the civil society, rather the well-thought-out, diverse and far-reaching programmes to do good to the society are true examples of their philanthropic, creative and welfare-motivated thinking. In contrast, in a poor political culture, the so-called politicians, the power-greedy malevolent people, are busy sidestepping the insightful opinions, analyses and reviews on socio-political progress of the country. In such an ill-fated country, the rulers, right after their rise to power, are surprisingly found caught in a circle of malicious viruses like corruption, favouritism, misuse of power, tampering of laws to serve self-interests, absorbing party-branded activists in administration, influencing the judiciary to legitimise the unlawful activities, making parliament to pass laws only on majority merit, and many other ill practices. All their sanctified (?) works are in fact devoted to evading the will of the people, the aspirations of the society!

Our experiences say that our leaders seem to have the solutions to all problems - they know how to educate the nation rapidly, how to break the poverty circle overnight, how to make a healthy nation, how to ensure social security and what not. But the reality is different - when the civil society alleges that most of the citizens suffer from insecurity of life and feel the absence of social justice, the rulers claim complete security of life; when the former alleges that the poor people of the country are getting poorer day by day, the latter claim that the country is over-flooded with development; when the former alleges quality of education is falling gradually, the latter are happy with the misadjusted literacy rate.

How the rulers think has been proved faulty again and again. When the social researchers and the newspapers were repeatedly warning the governments of the rise of strong extremist groups with serious threats to social and national life, the governments not only ruled out their warning, but also went as far as planning to curb newspapers . These anti-social elements, the blood-sucking vampires, could show up, we think just of because of the government's indulgence.

The political ideals are now a distant past. The political parties are now empowered by the businesspeople-turned businesslike politicians who act on tactics rather than on ideals. So, the fundamental differences in principles, objectives, ideals or declarations in the party constitutions are no more a factor, because these can easily be put aside when the sole concern is power.