We are slowly coming to
terms with the fact that an honest party like the Aam Aadmi Party will find it very difficult
to fight established political parties under the current electoral system and
win in significant numbers. As our aim is to 'cleanse' politics of its corrupt
elements, we may have to think in novel ways - that fulfill our goals, but may ignore conventions.
The following ideas owe their origin to the discussions we had among ourselves. Thanks to Roschen, Prem, Nahas, Prasad, Ratheesh, Rajan and many others for inspiring me to articulate the following ideas - some of which you may think are unusual, but I request you all to consider them with an open mind.
In the prevailing system of mores and cultural norms of contemporary society, as Ratheesh mentioned, there is a view that about 90% of people are harmed as well as rewarded by corruption - and therefore it is very difficult to convince the bulk of the society about the detrimental nature of corruption.
If our main aim is to cleanse politics of corruption, we have to support all honest politicians regardless of the parties they belong to. The collective force of all honest elements in the whole of the political community and bureaucracy - in its entirety - has to be harnessed for the fulfillment of our objective of cleansing politics of corruption and dishonesty. This means - we have to support honest politicians wherever they can be found. As most of society is confused about the value of fighting corruption, we may not get enough 'moral ammunition' within the AAP or any other single party to effectively combat the forces of corruption and criminality within politics. But by adopting the unconventional policy of supporting politicians of even our 'rival' political parties, we can hope to gather enough strength for the fight. This means if somebody with proven integrity and honesty belonging to our rival party is standing for election, AAP should support him or her. In another constituency, we may be fielding our own more honest candidate against a not-so-honest candidate of the same rival party.
We should have a very dynamic and flexible policy of political support that is responsive to the perceived integrity of individual candidates. In this way, we may be able to achieve our aim of cleansing the parliament of corrupt elements by replacing them with honest elements. If honesty and goodness are there, ideological differences between parties will not get in the way of serving justice for all sections of the society. Honesty and integrity may be considered themselves 'ideologies' that are potent to smooth over other political ideological differences based on more superficial economic perspectives.
Therefore let us adopt a policy of supporting honesty and integrity wherever you can find them - in any party, in any office. We will encourage them morally and politically and with every resource at our disposal. We will field our own candidates who we believe to be honest only against candidates of other parties who we perceive to be corrupt. (This idea was suggested to me by VR Rajan)
Our main aim is to cleanse politics and administration of dishonesty and corruption and this is best achieved by adopting a policy of 'trans-party conditional support' of honest elements of the entire political and bureaucratic community.
Adopting such a policy, it will be easy to carry out party work. Party work as carried out by workers at all levels will have a unified focus. All we need is to tell people - that we need to displace our current corrupt elements in the parliament by electing honest people. We will have a system of evaluating the worth of candidates by using a scoring system. Against each parameter that is desired in our representative, we will ask them to score the candidate based on our knowledge of the history of his or her behaviour in the past. In every constituency, we will tell our voters to vote for the candidate we have chosen to support based on our careful analysis of the individual's honesty and integrity level. For this kind of activity, we don't need much money. All we need is to publish our position statement just once in the important newspapers a few times before the election. Those who subscribe to our philosophy (of unconditional support to honesty and conditional support to politicians across party divides based on their honesty-quotient) will vote for our chosen candidate. This way AAP will be a formidable political force with a single ideology - that 'politicians should be good at heart' and 'Only Good People can Save the Country'.
Rather than frontally and fiercely attacking corrupt elements - as our National leaders often tend to do - it will be more effective to actively support the honest elements in other parties. Corrupt and dishonest elements do not respond favourably to criticisms with reformation of their behaviour. Often what happens is that the 'blame' will provoke their egos causing them to create trouble that could be avoided if they are ignored completely. By supporting the honest elements of other parties, we could get them to marginalize the corrupt elements from within their own party. The very fact that we don't voice our support to them will be our indictment of the corrupt elements in politics.
I wish there is an open, free and vigorous brainstorming on these issues. Please come out with your brutally candid views.
The following ideas owe their origin to the discussions we had among ourselves. Thanks to Roschen, Prem, Nahas, Prasad, Ratheesh, Rajan and many others for inspiring me to articulate the following ideas - some of which you may think are unusual, but I request you all to consider them with an open mind.
In the prevailing system of mores and cultural norms of contemporary society, as Ratheesh mentioned, there is a view that about 90% of people are harmed as well as rewarded by corruption - and therefore it is very difficult to convince the bulk of the society about the detrimental nature of corruption.
If our main aim is to cleanse politics of corruption, we have to support all honest politicians regardless of the parties they belong to. The collective force of all honest elements in the whole of the political community and bureaucracy - in its entirety - has to be harnessed for the fulfillment of our objective of cleansing politics of corruption and dishonesty. This means - we have to support honest politicians wherever they can be found. As most of society is confused about the value of fighting corruption, we may not get enough 'moral ammunition' within the AAP or any other single party to effectively combat the forces of corruption and criminality within politics. But by adopting the unconventional policy of supporting politicians of even our 'rival' political parties, we can hope to gather enough strength for the fight. This means if somebody with proven integrity and honesty belonging to our rival party is standing for election, AAP should support him or her. In another constituency, we may be fielding our own more honest candidate against a not-so-honest candidate of the same rival party.
We should have a very dynamic and flexible policy of political support that is responsive to the perceived integrity of individual candidates. In this way, we may be able to achieve our aim of cleansing the parliament of corrupt elements by replacing them with honest elements. If honesty and goodness are there, ideological differences between parties will not get in the way of serving justice for all sections of the society. Honesty and integrity may be considered themselves 'ideologies' that are potent to smooth over other political ideological differences based on more superficial economic perspectives.
Therefore let us adopt a policy of supporting honesty and integrity wherever you can find them - in any party, in any office. We will encourage them morally and politically and with every resource at our disposal. We will field our own candidates who we believe to be honest only against candidates of other parties who we perceive to be corrupt. (This idea was suggested to me by VR Rajan)
Our main aim is to cleanse politics and administration of dishonesty and corruption and this is best achieved by adopting a policy of 'trans-party conditional support' of honest elements of the entire political and bureaucratic community.
Adopting such a policy, it will be easy to carry out party work. Party work as carried out by workers at all levels will have a unified focus. All we need is to tell people - that we need to displace our current corrupt elements in the parliament by electing honest people. We will have a system of evaluating the worth of candidates by using a scoring system. Against each parameter that is desired in our representative, we will ask them to score the candidate based on our knowledge of the history of his or her behaviour in the past. In every constituency, we will tell our voters to vote for the candidate we have chosen to support based on our careful analysis of the individual's honesty and integrity level. For this kind of activity, we don't need much money. All we need is to publish our position statement just once in the important newspapers a few times before the election. Those who subscribe to our philosophy (of unconditional support to honesty and conditional support to politicians across party divides based on their honesty-quotient) will vote for our chosen candidate. This way AAP will be a formidable political force with a single ideology - that 'politicians should be good at heart' and 'Only Good People can Save the Country'.
Rather than frontally and fiercely attacking corrupt elements - as our National leaders often tend to do - it will be more effective to actively support the honest elements in other parties. Corrupt and dishonest elements do not respond favourably to criticisms with reformation of their behaviour. Often what happens is that the 'blame' will provoke their egos causing them to create trouble that could be avoided if they are ignored completely. By supporting the honest elements of other parties, we could get them to marginalize the corrupt elements from within their own party. The very fact that we don't voice our support to them will be our indictment of the corrupt elements in politics.
I wish there is an open, free and vigorous brainstorming on these issues. Please come out with your brutally candid views.
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