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Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Getting there is More Fun…

Editorial:-
The election process is now over and in another day, a new government will be sworn in. Through the campaigning, every party and all aspirants promised to solve all problems and cure all ills. And now the people have spoken and handed over different roles to different politicians and their parties. Over the next five years, the voters will get to see what their choices are worth and what their mandate has delivered. The next few weeks will be about analysis, claims, speculations, celebrations, much sycophancy and some leg pulling, and after the initial euphoria is over, it will be back to the brass-tacks of governance, policy-making and delivery. Here’s to hoping that the process proceeds well and everyone measures up to their prescribed role. Sikkim has lost too much time and too many opportunities to the acrimonious politics which has played out here for at least the past year and a half, before which it had suffered the serious setback delivered by the earthquake. Hopefully, the coming days will treat Sikkim to some inspired engagement by its elected representatives and responsive administration by the still, unfortunately, slow on its feet bureaucracy.
But then, if everyone delivered flawlessly on the roles decided for them, they would have served up a perfect world; and does anyone want to in such a place? A perfect world after all is also one without attrition- a world where everything is always hunky-dory. No one disagrees, no one argues, no one challenges and everyone is happy. A world without a conflict of ideas, opinions or even versions is possible only when everything is the same. Not just lifestyles, but even the thought processes cannot differ in such a world. A world where freedom of expression means nothing because Free Speech makes sense only when it challenges existing practices or when it is required to tease some response/ action. In a Utopia, everything is already perfect and how long can one exercise free speech to keep praising something everyone already knows and is comfortable with. Shouldn’t Utopia remain something everyone aspires to in an attempt to improve upon things, but stops short of actually achieving? But who are we fooling, such a perfect world is not possible. But then again, this reality should not stifle aspirations working towards it. In fact, every generation has a responsibility to keep the process alive even if achieving perfection is not possible. What is then achieved is optimism and a stronger sense of responsibility because then every generation is challenged to improve on things. Yes, that should be the aim – not securing perfection, but making things better. So, instead of hoping that the elected representatives and even those who claim to speak for the people [even though they have no formal mandate to do so] deliver perfectly on their current jobs, the people [the electorate] should continue their involvement [as proven with the 80+ percent voter turnout] and keep those in public life sharp by letting them know that just as they enjoy the people’s mandate, they also come under public scrutiny. That should make the process of getting There more fun, as it should be, than reaching the destination, which thankfully is not possible because then it would be the end…

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