“If you are mean and criminal minded, if you can shout and fume for hours about nothing, if you are worthless but can win an election somehow, your value in politics immediately shoots up“.
The word ‘culture’ is normally associated with the values developed over decades or centuries by a civilized society. These values cover the whole gaunt of life spiritual as well as mundane. A society develops certain patterns of thinking and reacting. These patterns may undergo a change with the passage of time or stay un broken like religions dogmas. Briefly speaking, culture is code of cherished values which touches every sphere of public and private activity from ordinary amusement to the highest form of creativity. As such, culture also refers to some kind of uniformity in diversity and a desire to co-exist despite views and conflicting aspirations. In addition, divergent culture pinpoints the direction of your growth. Whether material or intellectual or spiritual.
If you interpret and understand culture as a code of cherishes values, you will find it impossible to apply it to the Indian political scenario. Indian politics neither recognizes nor pursues anything worthwhile. It is a playground of degenerate sons whose only purpose is to gather as much loot as possible and hand the legacy over to another robber who belongs to his or her family of course, there are exceptions but these are, far and few between. Indian politics can boast of innumerable scams to exemplify its creativity. We have invented countless ways of fraud, truculence, deceit and so on. If you are mean and criminal minded, if you can shout and fume for hours about nothing, if you are worthless but can win an election somehow, your value in politics immediately shoots up. But to give his due to the Indian politician, he has learnt to co-exist with all kinds of rascals and scoundrels. You can, therefore, easily understand how difficult it is to apply the word culture (in any of its senses) to Indian politics. The word becomes debased and run of the mill Indian politician gets elevated, if that is possible.
As for growth and its direction, silence of death would be the best reply unfortunates. That option is not likable while writing. So, growth could either be purely physical, in the form of obesity, or it could be in the form of prosperity. It could also be relative to the office that you hold. Growth as related to vision, knowledge, country, honors is sheer nonsense, to be avoided like the plague. Indian politician refuses to indulge in risky heroics. He does not recognize the existence of such base notions.
Electoral politics knows up two kinds of politician-elected and roving. Among the elected representatives of the people at different levels, there are those who belong to some political party and there are the independents. Exceptions aside, most of these politicians reveal an astonishing similarity in action as well as reaction, everything they say or do is marked by artificiality, assumed importance, egoism and hypocrisy. They will try to deceive you with words as well as facial expression. Your ordinary politician, in short, is an unenviable conformation of deception and lies. But their overt and covert greatness will be properly discussed and analyzed later. Let us take first things first.
The Indian political market although exclusive in many respects, receives legitimacy and sustenance from certain provisions of the constitution of India as amended from time to time. How is it that our constitution has produced such massive and intolerable stink? Even a fish-market, in comparison, would appear to be sweet-scented. Here, we can work on three options either the Indian constitution is asinine and inadequate or there is something fund amentally wrong with our nature or we have unwittingly, allowed ourselves to be pushed towards a complete moral collapse. These options are worth discussing at some length.
As a document that proceeds for the form of Government and the various supporting institutions the constitution lends its weakness as well strength to all of those institutions. Politics, bad or good, begins with political institutions which have their origin in the constitution. It ends with the quality of individuals who find entry into those institutions unfortunately, we have blundered on both counts. The framers of our constitution failed to envisage, least of all provide against, various eventualities. They were a disparate lot who fought and disputed but never came to the right conclusion. They were decides for an India which they (or at least most of them) neither understood nor respected. They were inspired and motivated by western culture and western values, totally unsuited to Indian psyche. Most of them worked as stooges of the plunderers the British. The constitution which they finally produced had nothing original in it. It merely imposed British thinking on us, a high tribute to the rapists of India.