Politics and politicians- we all love to hate them. Be it at the national level or the Delhi University Students’ Union or our respective college student unions- we love to heap scorn on the nature of politics and raise our noses in disdain. The politicians don’t care about us, they are all just driven by their own personal agenda and just further them under the garb of doing acts for public welfare, we say. And an obvious consequence of this derision is considering our selves above this very popularly considered immoral, ignoble and unscrupulous activity. However, it is extremely hypocritical of us as we politicize almost every aspect of our own lives.
Basically the popular perception of a politician is a person who influences group opinion in his or her favor, irrespective of whether it will be beneficial for the group as a whole. Now, don’t we all do that? Except for the few people who are the epitomes of selflessness or are exceptionally blunt, we all engage in the very act that we all deride. Of course it is at a personal level. Various examples can be given on this count. Like scheduling a mass bunk on a day you really can’t come to college. Now why should everyone else not come if one person cannot? Why should everybody else suffer the missed attendances and the unfinished syllabus? But many a time we try really hard for this to happen. Of course to do this, you wouldn’t go about telling your classmates not to come because you have to get your hair dyed. You would go about lying, trying to give them to reason to not come when there really isn’t a reason. It would involve cooking up a story, which could be anything from a terrorist threat to calling an innocuous sneeze a definite symptom of impending death, depending upon the gullibility of your classmates, of course. Now, isn’t this wrong, immoral and unscrupulous in the very way politicians are infamous of being?
Another thing politicians are notorious for is doing whatever is possible and being in the good books of the people who can pull a few strings here and there, or somebody who could help you out. Well don’t we like to appease the people in the administrative offices of our colleges? Don’t we try very hard not to miff the person who makes really good notes? Don’t we all suck up to our teachers because they control our internals’ marks? Of course we will be bitching about them behind their backs, but as long as the sugary sweet façade is in place, the show goes on.
So, on the whole, we shouldn’t really just blame our politicians for being politicians. We all have a Machiavelli in us too and I think that’s what spices up our otherwise mundane routine. Acknowledge that politician in you and keep up the politics!
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