The terms democracy and self-rule, if considered as synonyms, may have to be redefined in the current context of the country and its masses being taken for a ransom by everyone-knows-who, going by media reports occupying most of the column space in dailies and telecast time on the small screen virtually serving minute-to-minute action similar to ball-to-ball radio commentary on cricket matches. The similarity has its meaning in the all-too-familiar scenario of horse-trading by power-hungry vote-seekers and match-fixing by the cricketers in quest of fast buck despite being paid cash in amounts that is envy of people. Party-hopping by the politicos of yesteryears and switching loyalties by their present-day cohorts, the former, few and far between while the latter, both sharks and small fry, routinely lured by cash in amazing amounts have turned into public entertainment, the mountainous cost of which doesn’t seem to be bothered about by the land’s people at large. Talk of the country rising to be a five trillion dollar economy in the next five to ten years, doubling farm income during the next two or three years, shelter for all in the country, zero unemployment and so on figuring regularly in the public domain by the powers that be seems to have lulled the masses into keenly looking forward to achhe din.

The full-time pre-occupation of the vote-mongers in Karnataka and many other States across the country with hatching plots to topple Governments while betraying the trust vested in them doesn’t seem to have stirred the masses into a show of strength sending the betrayers to where they ought to be. There is no prize for guessing that destination correctly.

Dailies of all hues deserve to be thanked heartily for echoing the woes of the citizens in this functioning anarchy, in the words of renowned political analyst and former Ambassador of United States of America in India during the 1950s. A Financial Advisor to the country’s one of the major multi-disciplinary research organisations, with an insight into the ways of its staff, took fascination to display three graphs on the wall in his Office to classify the research projects, all in humour without meaning to cast aspersions on the organisation’s working or its staff. The first graph showed an upward moving line with the caption: Ongoing projects. The second graph showed a straight line with the caption: Non-going projects. The third graph showed a downward moving line with the caption: Gone-going projects.

Anybody can guess which of these above graphs unequivocally represents the development projects launched by Governments with cost estimates that can blow up the brains of the best Financial Advisors, on the agenda of Karnataka Government in particular and other Governments of States across the country in general, even as the politicos are over busy in hi-tech horse-trading marked by life in five-star hotels and hopping by air in chartered aircraft.