Abbailu,
I am not sure how much you know about Loksatta or JP. I just want to brief on what I know...
I started following JP as a politician from 2007 when he started this new political party Loksatta. I saw one of his interviews in one Telugu channel (not sure if it was eTV or TV9). Before that I heard a lot about him through my dad but never got a chance to listen to his speeches.
Very first point that made me think is on how much the government is spending on us. In their 5 year tenure our Government is spending 2.5 lakh rupees on each family on an average. This spending is for our roads, our water, our electricity, our education, our health, other subsidies that they are giving. And we are paying tax to the government to get these facilities.
Do you know that in the next 5 years Government is going to spend 6 to 7 lakh crore rupees in Andhra Pradesh itself? And around 3 crore voters are going to cast their votes (going by 60-65% polling average). That means each vote cost is approximately 2 lakh rupees! By casting our vote we are electing and authorizing a small group of people to think through wisely and decide how to spend this 6/7 lakh crore rupees for our benefit.
Earlier I used to think that people who want to get 'fame' are getting into politics. But my thinking was wrong (most of it). There is a LOT OF MONEY involved in this field. Government is the biggest organization in any country. Just imagine 290+ MLAs and 550+ around MPs are going to decide where should we spend this 6/7 lakh crores in Andhra Pradesh itself. Do your math... and see how much each could possibly control!
2 rupees kilo rice scheme costs 2000 crores every year to the Govt. That means a mere 10,000 crores in 5 years. That is not even 2% of total expenditure. What is happening to the rest of the 98% money? That could be spent in providing quality education, health, infrastructure development, job oriented training, job creation etc. Instead these goons are eating all of it by bringing colorful schemes.
For obvious reasons this money is getting into wrong hands. Every time during elections people are trying their best to change the players. If you look at the past, most of the parties which formed Government hardly succeeded second tenure. We sweetly term it as incubancy factor. What JP says is we need to change the rules of the game instead of changing the players. New political culture is what we need.
I used to believe is that population is main reason why we are not able to develop our country. But the numbers are speaking otherwise. Population is definitely a problem. But there are bigger problems than this. Wrong people in politics is our biggest problem. Statistics that I heard from JP are driving me crazy. Until he came no leader gave us this information.
Please go through the speech that JP made in Mumbai University long time back... where he gives a clear picture on how we should look at politics. I like his statement... "Negation of politics is not the solution. Better politics is the solution".
Kalam in one of his books mentioned that... if there is no common goal for a group small minds will take over. This applies to every group (country, state, organization, even our own family). That is why Kalam had set a vision for us "I want to see India as a developed country by 2020". And he wrote a book on how to achieve that goal. I would frankly say that none of his contemporary leaders could such kind of goal to our country men.
We need leaders like him. Leaders who can give direction. Leaders who can see the big picture and give us direction. In my opinion JP is one such leaders.
I feel that as long as JP is alive and talking... I don't need to read any books. I don't need to look for other sources for analysis/direction. Just listen what he says and tell it to all you care about. That is good enough to start with.
Loksatta calls this as second freedom fight.
Thanks,
Syam
