Pundits often take fascination to prescribe ground rules to the Government of the day to be adhered in order to provide good governance so that even the land’s last citizen feels happy, his or her minimum aspiration is to keep the belly reasonably full while living in comfort with a roof over head. The prescription for good governance, presented in simple-to-understand words, requires the top brass at the helm, both at the Centre and in the States as well as Union Territories, to spell out the three P principle namely, the Policy in broad terms, Programme as a set of measures and Plan of action as projects with their nuances, including cost and time-frame. These ground rules seem to have been followed religiously by the successive administrations from the start over the last seven-plus decades of democratic rule in the land, barring some aberrations marked by the administration going awry, mostly due to authority and power sliding into the hands of elected representatives of people with poor credentials.

The making up of the ingredients of Democracy, which late T.N. Seshan opined as the worst, has been hit by flaws, thanks to the focus by the politicos on getting rich by carving their share from public funds. A cartoonist has humorously and euphemistically portrayed the track record of the vote-mongers as Common Minimum Programme.

A city of the dimension of Mysuru hosting nearly three lakh families / households serves as a fairly-true-to-reality example of the Common Minimum Programme of their members, namely to be blessed with a livelihood in a floating State. The proportion of the households in any urban space that are placed in a zone of life’s comfort in the total headcount is anybody’s guess. Thanks to the dubious role models that the land’s vote-seekers are openly exposing themselves, virtues by which past generations exemplified in their lives, such as work ethics, honesty, compassion, tolerance, patience, disciplined living, speaking without hurting others’ feelings and so on are followed more in their breach.

To make a long story short, the politicos barring rare exceptions across the country, have sullied the meaning of the word coalition, by no-holds-barred compromise of the foretold virtues to occupy the gaddi called Government. The cartoonist has succinctly observed their Common Minimum Programme in these words: Just Plunder, what else?