Oti Baje

Politicking and campaigning are carried out in specific standard ways with just one purpose in mind although it has several ramifications and diversifications. No matter how different the situations may be, the frameworks are all the same: to confuse, deceive, or bamboozle, with the intention to sell a product, service, or person to the seller''s advantage. Yes, the buyer too may be advantaged, but this is not the primary motive of most, if not all, politicians. But what about Indira Gandhi, some might ask. I mention that lady, in error instead of the man who bore the same surname with her: Mahatma Gandhi but much earlier than her and mistakenly called her father: Jawaharlal Nehru, who too was in politics and so ruled India also. Gandhi Senior was the leader of the Indian independence movement against the British, and he employed nonviolent civil disobedience that the American sage Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. took after. Democracy, we have been told, is a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. If this really true, why then do so many people do absolutely nothing and so cause their society to be less than it can be or even in some cases to actually decay or rot away? Fortunately, or should we say unfortunately, this author has lived in two countries for scores of years. In one, for example, there is electricity supply 24/7, and in the other the people experience black outs continuously for days if not weeks on end with the accompanying problems of noise and air pollution from generators, short life expectancies, sickness, and destruction of businesses that require power for refrigeration. But we can get rid of these problems by simply counting ourselves in, that is, as part of the society. Yes, the least you can do. Just yesterday the last day of October...