Visualizing my political career – Part 1

It was about 2 years back that I joined the Lok Satta Party.  The day couldn’t have been more auspicious.  It was on the day of 150th birth anniversary of Swami Vivekananda, someone whose life has inspired me a lot.  It is always going to be difficult for me to express my gratitude to him. As someone who admires him so much, joining politics on his 150th birth anniversary can only be considered as with his blessings and as a political ‘initiation’ in its most literal sense. Perhaps, I would have thought twice had it been on any other day.  Joining Politics on this blessed day gives me the confidence that I will make a significant contribution to Indian politics.

I joined LSP and later contested in the Assembly Elections and pooled about 1245 votes, much below the main parties but yet above about 15 contestants, some of whom were from main national parties. On the day of counting, I stayed almost till the end of counting and tried to understand how this system works.  I was 5th and was below the Congress, BJP, KJP, and JD(S). There were another 15 contestants some of whom represented a wonderful ideology and contested in the elections to play their role in defining good politics that is to come up in India.  As such, people chose LSP as the best among these newcomers.  That was encouraging.

Initial days after the elections were good in LSP with everyone being optimistic and upbeat about the future of LSP.  The emergence of AAP coupled with lack of equal enthusiasm in LSP meant that LSP started to loose ground in Karnataka and resulted in some main members moving out of the party leading to a total breakdown in the moral of the cadre.  Of main things in life, I am usually patient and persistent and won’t take a decision in a haste.  Joining AAP was never in my mind considering their arrogance and lack of consistency.  But when LSP leadership became insensitive to the feelings of their sincere members, I did consider resigning from LSP.  But I liked LSP and its ideology, just like a loyal spouse.  All the problem was with the people who took important decisions, which I felt were not transparent and were not based on proper reasoning.

But as it turned out, few things changed for the better and I decided to continue with LSP.  For one, I believe that if we are talking of a new political party which believes in an evolved concept of politics, it must show it in its own day to day activities. We can draw inspiration from the Ramakrishna Math established by none other Swami Vivekananda himself and how he consciously tried to bring in internal democracy in administration.  Monarchy, lack of transparency in electing leaders, not being serious about the cause, not being sensitive to the opinions of the members of the party are not something that should be followed in new political culture.  In that case, there is no real need of a new political party. Existing parties do that well enough.  Having said that, I also realize that LSP is the best platform to implement the new concept of politics.  Political success may take time and it shouldn’t be our main concern. The most glorious contribution that we can make to Indian Politics today is to give it a wonderful political party which this nation truly deserves.  You know all about what an ideal political party should be like. LSP should be all about becoming that.  This, for me, is the biggest contribution that LSP can make to Indian politics.  We need to create a political party which is honest, reason based, open, unbiased, solution oriented and in a way unpolitical too.  This is the task that we have before us in Lok Satta.