Political Naivety won’t do !

Not so long ago, in 1962, we paid a huge price and conceded defeat in a war due to the supposed political naivety of Pandit Nehru. I ofcourse find it hard to believe that Pandit Nehru was that naive, because he seems to have managed to get ahead politically even though he wasn’t the most popular choice in the Congress party then. Anyway, yet another person showed naivety at that time and his youngest son, tried his level best to explain AAP’s dealing with the 2 crore deposit in their account as politically naive, yesterday !!

There is no place for naivety in public life, it seems cute but a naive leader puts the country, state, company or whatever it is that he/she is leading at huge risk. In the political world, naivety equals suicide…. If you want to remain naive, please do, it’s a free country, but don’t fight elections, don’t be part of the political machinery. The fact is I like Arvind Kejriwal, and the Aap experiment. A healthy democracy is a dance of the opposing, differing viewpoints – so the Aap viewpoint is relevant. But please grow up.

The fact that 2 crores came into their account at the stroke of midnight or over four hours or over ten days, just the fact that such a huge sum of money came in, should have raised alarm bells. If they couldn’t ascertain or verify the donors, just inform the government and don’t use the money till its trail is clear. My husband and I have setup an NGO called ShikshaDaan and we have a clear understanding that if we end up receiving any cash deposit in our account where we aren’t able to ascertain the credentials of the donor, we will just give the money to the Government. Why didn’t Aap do that ?

In the morning today, we were having an interesting discussion on the Delhi elections amongst our ISB batch mates. One of the things I mentioned there is in politics, do ends justify means ? If you need progress, you will have to take from the Earth, yes, the discussion should be about how you can minimize damage to the Earth, but it can’t be about no damage. Won’t work. In the same way, politics require smart people, and I would want a savvy, smart good leader for my state or country or city or company than a naive good leader. Yeah, they need to be conniving, scheming and secretive at times, as long as they have my country’s best interests in mind. Always look at the results – if the result brings good to many people now and later, how the result was achieved may have to left to the debaters.

I have always been partial to Lord Krishna… Because he is savvy, smart and cool. Remember he is no stickler for rules, and he lies, cheats, outsmarts his opponents, but we revere him as the most complete incarnation of God because all his actions result in greater good for the people, he doesn’t take the spoils of his actions home !

Maturity is about outgrowing naivety and political naivety doesn’t get you far. I wish Arvind outgrows his naivety and Aap becomes a credible force…. That’s the big lesson he should have learnt, but he seems to have only learnt about “not quitting”. Sad.