The Vanishing Leader

Who is a leader; asked my nephew who has turned intelligent, four times to his age. Not to disappoint his huge urge to know what could be a leader and how he/she/it possibly be looking like, I passed out some dry coughs a couple of times before I decide to answer back. I stumbled and giggled, fundamentally struggling to find appropriate words to answer so that I do make a point and yet remain absolutely sane, at least to the amount, not to jolt a kid’s inquisitiveness. ‘They could be anything but certainly not the types that we have in hoards in our politics’; I answered back finally. And would you believe, though my nephew looked more confused than he were to begin with, he largely understood the point and ran out yelling over his shoulders, ‘our politicians are not leaders’. So the moral of the story is; he may not have understood what a leader is but understood very well that our politicians are certainly not leaders or at best a lot that always pretends to be leaders.

Now when I sit back and try to analyze the innocent words of him, I find him absolutely bang on the mark. Though he may not be aware of the veracity of whatever he deduced that day but for sure he is correct to the last syllable.

A leader always leads by example; not just by the position he is in. A leader is expected to gather people around him and get them convinced of the mission and at the same time have the gall to walk alone even if no one is convinced. Now, do you see any of these dictionary specific qualities in any of our present day politicians? When I say any, I do really mean it from the bottom of my heart. I don’t see any and perhaps you may be as well, provided you don’t belong to the Congress party where Rahul Gandhi is the Numero Uno leader, even before he was born. So for all those who are badly bullied by a strong doze of sycophancy, the scarcity of real leaders in our country might not look that alarming but for others, the lesser mortals like me; I would love to have someone whom I can look upon at the time of crisis.

The last leader that I could possibly remember roaming around our political circle could be Lalbahadur Shastri or may be Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Since the day we read out our first preamble and hoisted our tricolor at Lalkila for the first time, it is only pseudo leaders that have conjured to lead us or at best lead us to oblivion. The path to new generations or generations to come is generally formulated by the present lot. And the rot that we now see in our politics, in the name of leadership is the outcome of the tireless efforts of the morons those flouted the whole definition of leadership post independence.

Was Jawaharlal Nehru a true leader? Don’t believe those Congressi clowns who say even the theory of relativity was the brain child of him. Employ your brains and answer to yourself. Had he been a leader with a vision as many morons claim, then we wouldn’t have dished out as much as we did to Pakistan after partition. Have we never had a certain Sardar Patel at the helm we might have lost more because of the stupid avatar of Chacha Nehru. Even if his lack of administrative qualities could be forgiven for once, his hugging and kissing spree with every woman around, including Lady Mountbatten doesn’t score well in the sheet as far as leadership is concerned. What message one would sent across millions of citizens when being the PM, his photographs with almost in the verge of drooling at the very presence of beautiful women passes around. It is not only me but even the then foreign media houses were critical of such womanizing qualities of a so called state’s head. When the nation was going through crisis, both financial as well security wise, this supposed leader was roaming around the world sporting a red rose in pursuit of that coveted Nobel Peace prize. Amazing leadership credentials, I must say. When people like Patel and others were losing their sleep on burning issues, this man was busy delivering clandestine stand on the whole issue of financial and infrastructural growth. All that this mega leader did all through his political life was to prepare his daughter to adore the thorn once he gets down.

Nehru pretty much set the trend for the upcoming leaders and no doubt on the kind of nasty artifacts we have churned out thereafter. The leadership went so vibrant during 1971 that we had a mother-son duo creating mayhem on the nation and pulling it down by at least a couple of decades through the forgetful emergency imposition. A court enact order on the authenticity of a leader and her leadership resulted in clamping down of every democratic institution, along with the media and public robbery of the state treasury and all the PSU banks of that time by the leader’s son. Glad that systematic sabotage of our democracy brought the incarnation of a leader of some credibility called Jayprakash Narayan. Now do you find Indira Gandhi a true leader? In any way a true leader would ever enact atrocities as Indira Gandhi did? But ask any Congressi rear lover, he/she would put this awful lady at par with Swami Vivekananda.

The story of having shameful individuals as leaders continued till we were blessed with a bout of fresh air, going by the name Vajpayee. This man for a change has some serious vision in the right direction. A leader that we can proudly boast about. But sad, we never gave this man a second turn to continue with his great work for the nation. Perhaps we as a nation are too rotten to deserve someone like Atal Bihari Vajpayee leading us.

As they say, whatever that followed Vajpayee is history. Complete hara-kiri of our democratic frameworks. Now we have leaders who are more seen behind bars than out of it. Some of them are charged with heinous accusations of rape and murder. Now we have leaders who on any day will put the entire highway robbers lot to shame with their phenomenal looting skills. Thugs and looters have got a new name of 'LEADER' of late. Suresh Kalmadi and A. Raja are such ornaments who not only are our leaders but also have managed to establish world records in scams and graft charges. We have them in murder trails; we have them in rape charge sheets; we have them in international money laundering business; we have them on the front row in parliament and watching porn; we have them flashing guns at tool booths; we have them slapping Govt officials for doing their duty. We in fact have them at all possible wrong places that one don’t expect the leaders to ever be in. We have leaders who consume thousand crores of cattle food as part of their diet and largely remain a big shame to our democracy. We have leaders who win elections and go ahead to become the chief-minister, not because people love him but because he has way too many people who routinely wander around the streets with fully loaded guns. We have leaders who go on a statue making spree of her once bestowed with power. We have them from every cast, creed and religion and of course of every nefarious type.

The list of garbage, the real legacy of Nehru and alike are plenty. They are in our parliament, every legislative or may be in every Panchayat. The so called leaders who flounder the rule of the land at the drop of a hat are everywhere incapacitating the whole notion of leadership. Now the leaders don’t lead but engage themselves in lookout of the avenues to loot the nation. Now our leaders no more set examples but become examples of how a leader shouldn’t carry himself or herself. And there are of course few exceptions like Mamata Banarjee who just don’t gel with anything around them. They create a clout of their own where tolerance and mature sense of decision making finds no place.

Hope my nephew reads this piece someday to get the explanation when I said a leader could be anything but not at least those which we see in our political class.