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TidBits.002 (The Mark of a Politician) And it an established fact that Politicians are indispensable. If anyone believes in Miracles in this modern day world, they are hardly attributed to the Gods, or to Mother Theresas. In all fairness, it is the Politicians who perform the Miracles for us common folks. Miracles like a drinking water tap, a black topped road, a tube of light on the electric pole near our house, permission to build sans a proper licence, and , of course, the Dayanand Pension Scheme et al. And, we believe in Miracles when we see one. And it is in our genes to worship the Miracle makers, for we believe that only Politicians are capable of such Godly feats, that of robbing Peter, keeping most of it, and giving the pittance to Paul. And it is said, many times over, that Politics is the last recourse of a CROOK. But, it is hard to apply this yardstick to each and every politician, past or present. There have been a few good politicians that we remember of. A home grown Lal Bahadur Shastri for one. Then we had Abraham Lincoln, Jack Kennedy, the British bulldog, Sir Winston Churchill, and hello Mr. Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore!, I am stuck for names. Though no one shot Sir Winston Churchill, (and who went on to live to die at a ripe old age, probably because of the tag of the bulldog that he totted, which kept his would be assassins at bay), the wicked hand reached Taskent in Russia to poison Lal Bahadur Shastri. It may seem that nobody wants good politician for a prolonged period of time, and they make it to the offices by mistake or by rare chance. But nothing happens to the bad ones , atleast some, like our dear old Morarji Desai whom even a plane crash could not kill. But then by virtue of being shot dead, Indira Gandhi would classify for being a good politician, which she was'nt. She was the worst of them all. She succumbed to the monster she herself had created. And there was Rajiv Gandhi who was given the premiership of India for being Indira Gandhi's son and because there was not a single congressman in the entire nation to fill in the shoes that Indira Gandhi had vacated.. He too would classify for being a good politician after having been a good Indian Airlines pilot, for reason of being horribly blown off by a human bomb. The Big Guns of Bofors along with the LTTE it was that got him, though. He really could have been a good politician if he had remembered that getting to be India's Prime Minister from an ordinary pilot was like the whole world being put at one's feet. But he still chose to put Bofors in his pocket as well as save the skins of some of his worthless friend's. What a pity. And they say Sanjay Gandhi would have put all bad politicians to shame if he did'nt fall from the skies, or perhaps was not dropped from the skies. Maneka, of course is destined to be the favoured politician among the four legged voters, that is, if she can help make the parliament give them the right to vote. And Sonia is definitely not a good politician because Togadia and Modi vociferously say so. That leaves us with Advani and Vajpayee. I personally feel that Vajpayee is a good politician, for I cannot see him as a crook taking recourse to politics, especially in the wake of his canceling the licences to all petrol pumps given to his won BJP wallas . However, I will not say the same of the crafty Advani, who must be secretly saying Namaz(s) ten times a day to Allah for giving him the number two position, (at the cost of "HIS" Babri Masjid, and which he is going to make the RAM TEMPLE), which otherwise, was an impossible dream for him. Vajpayee has to be a good politician. Has'nt he given us Goans a costly Sky-Bus as the New Year's gift? Hope there are not many crafty BJP walla Chief Ministers like Manohar Parrikar of Goa who can turn Vajpayee's heart into a ball of gold and bankrupt the whole nation. And we never knew there was another equally efficient and even proven project called 'AEROBUS' which has even conducted the preliminary feasibility survey, and importantly, which does not need a lot of digging and cement concrete. Goa has got more than the share of these two already, thanks to the Town & Country Planning with a penchant for shading Goa's landscape maps with crayons and the PWD/Goa Telecom combined. Only hope these two Sky-Buses do not collide in mid air and leave Goans spilled on the good old earth to eat the dust. And I also hope that Vajpayee has one more pair of eyes at the back of his head, if for nothing else, only to watch the moves of craftfy Advani behind him, for a likely stab in the back. And of course, I think Manohar Parrikar is a good politician too. Not because he is going to be shot at in the near future. I don't think there are any steady hands that could hold the gun for a fair, on the target, shot specially from the Congress camp where his very name seems to be knocking many a 'otherwise' steady knees. I think he is a good politician because he has worked hard on Vajpayee to give us the Sky-Bus, and he has worked hard to give us the Panjim Municipal Corporation, which he eventually will, and, he is working the hardest to give us the Hindu Rashtra in Goa which we have been missing for close to five centuries. This is easy after his endeared BJP walla Wendell Rodricks has given our dear old GOA and the nation the first ever peals of the 'Gay Wedding Bells' We only knew Wendell's first love was the Goa BJP apart from his routine fashion designing, until we were made to realize that his first love was kept hidden in France. And Mahatma Gandhi, the pronounced "Father of the Nation" could have been a good politician if the RSS wallas had allowed him to live and enjoy the good fruits of his back-breaking work of freeing India from the British Raj. But even that title of "The Father of the Nation" is in doubt when Nobel laureates like V.S. Naipaul see the need to throw stones in the already agitated waters. And his statement that he is contributing to a small ripple is an understatement of the year. This small ripple, combined, with the other bigger ripples of water mixed with human blood that are being made vis a vis the proposed debate on the Country's Secularism is surely going to contribute to the tidal wave which is going to drown the Nation in time to come. Nobel laureate or not, we common folks get the distinct feeling that the RSS wallas are not content in having gained the title of being the MURDERES of Mahatma Gandhi once. They want to do it again. What is India coming to UH! And come to think that we Goans have endeared ourselves to this half naked, dhoti sporting Saviour of our adopted Nation (since 1961) and are now being told that this man was a miserable failure. Indeed, the Great Mahatma has failed miserably to see which was the larger evil for his country - The British Raj or the RSS. For a wonder, Mr. Praveen Togadia failed to include Goa in the list of states that he enumerated so eloquently in his recent public speech, which are in the making of mini-Pakistans, and which, according to him, is the reason why India must be a Hindu Rashtra. Of-course, he knows very well that Goans don't have what it takes, especially when they own a mother tongue that they themselves don't understand and are ashamed of it. Perhaps Goans at large must be getting the distinct feeling that they have been terribly mislead. And perhaps Goans would have saved themselves lot of trouble if they had continued under the Portuguese dictatorship and keep their harmony and language rather than be free, get inundated, and lose them both. And all those assurances coming from Mr. Lal Krishna Advani about Govt. being committed to 'Secularism' seems to be an eye-wash. The people of India should know who their leaders really are and what inner stuff they are made of. And coming back to the subject I started, before I got diverted, I would like to put down some criteria whereby a person could be judged if he/she has the mark of a politician:. Ones who professes no faith in Courts, justice, laws and rules and regulations, but relies solely on galvanizing gullible people into boisterous morchas, hunger strikes, fast unto deaths and some such things. Ones who are always in the background of calamities, or when people are dis-enchanted with services like cable TV fees hikes, Helmets rule etc (Aires Rodrigues excluded for he has made his intention re: politics very clear at the outset), just like the hyenas in the background of a carcass being devoured by actual hunters for crumbs and leftovers. Ones who flash printed visiting cards with the status of 'Social Workers" Ones who tells bureaucrats that their promotions as their PA's is assured when they attain the MLAships. Ones who overly bleeds for you at all times of the day or the night and who do not possess the word "NO" in their vocabulary, whether you may be wanting to do the right or the wrong. thing. And if one applies some of these criteria to many a upcoming concerned citizens among us, we will not fail to see that they are secretly crafting their special KODELs, all for themselves . For these are the persons that possess the "MARK OF A POLITICIAN" Cheers Floriano
