Do we need Lok Paritran?

Lok Paritran- a party floated by IITans- did well in the May 8th assembly elections in Tamil Nadu. Now, I am one of those voters who takes the whole business of voting very seriously. I read manifestos and I evaluate the performance of parties. I am not the sort of superficial voter that can be satisfied by the mere promise of economic growth. I look to see if such growth has been fair as measured by the Gini index and such other rigorous parameters. In short, I have a lot of free time.

Obviously, the emergence of LP in Tamil Nadu politics caught my eye. Their single biggest selling point, as far as I could make out, was being a “party floated by IITans”. I can’t even remember a second one. There was some talk about providing a “clean administration”. But, I dismissed that. It was really the “IITans” part that seemed to have caught the imagination of the voting public. Although why this particular fact constituted any selling point in politics was beyond me. I ranted about this silly faith that we have in IITans to my colleague during one of the many freewheeling discussions that we have on world politics and other important subjects. He heard me out and then told me that I was demanding and hard to please. I deny that charge completely. I am just logical. That is all.

I do believe that the entrance exam to get into the IITs is the toughest and most intellectually taxing examination anywhere in the world. I congratulate every single person who managed to clear that hurdle to get into the IITs. Having said that, I see no reason why anyone who managed to clear a demanding examination to get a technical degree becomes a corruption free and able administrator. Logically speaking, if we are at all looking for specific educational qualifications in our politicians should we not be looking for individuals with degrees in economics or political science even?

The problem is that we Indians have fallen into the mindset of viewing all politicians as being under educated if not just plain uneducated. (Not to mention, corrupt individuals who have collectively done no good for this country since independence). But, if you think about it, they are not such a badly educated lot. I cannot think of any country that is headed by two intellectuals of the stature of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President APJ Abdul Kalam.

I happen to know that the Union health minister Anbumani Ramadoss is somewhat aptly a medical doctor and Union finance minister P. Chidambaram does not exactly seem illiterate. Minister of Science & Technology, Kapil Sibal has Harvard on his resume as does Communications & Information Technology Minister, Dayanidhi Maran. Mani Shankar, Minister of Youth Affairs & Sports, has Cambridge on his CV. Commerce & Industry minister, Kamal Nath has a degree in commerce from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata. This is the same qualification as former Indian cricket captain Saurav Ganguly. I would imagine that what degree is good enough to lead the country in cricket should be good enough for the country itself.

I had a look at the bios of a good number of the Council of Ministers. There were way too many of them with a law degree- including Railways Minister, Lalu Prasad –for my liking. But, overall there was sufficient education. This nation is not being run by a bunch of illiterates.

In this context, I see no reason for voting public to be enamoured by a party simply because it was floated by IITans. This guarantees virtually nothing beyond the fact they are reasonably bright individuals. They need to prove themselves in far many more respects to be successful politicians.

After all the hype, comes the news that they have actually split over problems relating to caste, favoritism, lack of transparency and corruption. They managed all these impressive wrong doings in shortest span of time imaginable. Now, they seem more like politicians. But, we already have enough and more of this variety. We don’t need any more. We just might be better off showing a little support to those of the existing politicians that do seem to be capable, instead of seeking other alternatives.