Politicians and Bandhs

Why do politicians have such a mania for disrupting the lives of ordinary people? As it is, they do their best to disrupt the sittings of the various legislative bodies to which they've been elected. They behave in a manner that has even shocked unruly schoolchildren, taken to see parliament or state assemblies in session. Then they add to the fun and games by making it impossible for the rest of the country to function!

And no politician is an exception--from the VHP, which recently had a bandh to protest the treatment of Lord Rama as a mythological entity, to the DMK, which is in a sulk because the Sethusamudram project has been put into a deep freeze. What's with these guys--can't they let us get on with our lives and earn some money so that we can pay the taxes to keep our rulers in the style to which they have become accustomed since Independence?

Most of the politicians now in power have never done an honest day's work in their lives--the PM, who worked as an economist, being an honourable exception. Most of the men and women who followed Gandhiji into the wilderness to fight for freedom were well-educated and professionally qualified--this present lot appear to have spent more time learning to raise a ruckus than to do something constructive with their time. No wonder most middle-class people unfortunately avoid involvement in politics--they are the reasonable, sane alternative to the unprogressive hordes now in power. One might deride middle class values as bourgeois or passe, but ultimately, in a society where the economy is growing, the growth of the middle class might bring about some kind of progress, social and political, as well as economic. Let the CPI(M) dream on of a workers' paradise and all that--even a Socialist society is impossible without some capitalism and economic growth!