Broadly speaking, democracy, such as the system familiar to the land’s literati, per force needs politicians whose presence in the land is expanding in geometric progression with each passing year, if not each passing day. Considering the interface between democracy as a system of governing a country and the politicians, more so their sway over its aam janata, one is prompted to infer that politicians need democracy more than the other way about.

The nation’s leading lights who shone like the pole stir in the bygone days, now gone into pages of India’s history, have immortalised themselves by their matchless statesmanship in guiding the masses while the present generation lies at the mercy of the politicians at large. Their vainglorious claims to transparency in administration tempts one to redefine the term mocking at the physicist’s version.

The media has done an admirable and thankless job of discreetly reporting the no-holds-barred exchanges of expletives currently taking place, particularly among the heavy weights in Karnataka politics, in the august company of their counterparts in other States of the nation, adrift from norms of morals and ethics in the range that North pole is away from the South pole. It is needless to question the veracity of their criminal and the host of charges of uncivil acts, levelled mutually, unwittingly made transparent that even the man-in-the-street is aware of.

All doesn’t seem to be lost in the matter of steadying the ship of democracy even as it is experiencing turbulence on the high seas of administration. We do hear about ‘clean’ politicians on and off, both in many States and at the Centre. But, being in microscopic presence,  they only make news occasionally, provided some seasoned journalist takes care to inform the aam janata who read dailies. They are not giving up pounding the benches in the Legislative Assembly and rattling the ruling party with limited end result. They are the fast vanishing relics of the days the land hosted legends from different regions. Names of Tilak, Lajpath Rai, B.C. Roy, Rajaji, Vallabhbhai Patel and many others triggers feelings of wonder that such giants were India’s politicians.

Now, back to square one. The awesome quality of politics by which the aforementioned galaxy lived by their personal example and its current awful image created by the players in the field, also by their personal example, marks the makeover of democracy in the land as well as travesty of transparency in administration.