Ploytricks: a world of warlocks engrossed in profiteering on gullibility

           Ever since man learned the importance, better say the advantages, of united living against all crude hostility of nature and all the other carnivorous species of creatures wreaking rampage all across the pristine earth in the prehistoric ages starting all the way from Lower Paleolithic and leading up to Neolithic, and thereafter in the Bronze Age and Iron Age, be it in the Orient or the Occident, the entire human society, in its simplest form, got dichotomized in two chief classes – the ruler and the ruled, medievally modified as the oppressor and the oppressed – that after having transpassed through the ages of Monarchy and Kingship of the privileged echelons of the community thereby meandering across all the rebellions, if not treason or sedition, like the much-discussed one in Magna-Carta on the part of the socio-economically deprived class, now have evolved into their most adulterated forms as the crafty cabal of Political Leaders and the gullible roost of Voters.

           A scrutiny into the symmetry of obstinacy of the unalterable isms, especially those of the extremist factions of certain political faiths, and pliability of the moderates in the form of implementation of relaxation on the part of the rejuvenated coteries, each placed vis-a-vis in the giant amphitheater of politics, thronged by legions of statesmen of the worldly diaspora, in general, and their Indian counterparts, in particular, will reveal as to how relevant it is to get acquainted with current genre of political dispensation, if one is on the lookout for the exact nature of political facets that are to remain preponderant in the ages to come across the continents.

              Of course, it’s hard to decipher the riddle as to precisely when and where the modern form of politics finds its inception. But going by the words of the modern researchers in political history of the world, we can roughly determine that politics in its earliest form used to be a medium of study of ideas, faiths, cults, creeds, rituals, religious rites among the assembly of people belonging to different regions distinguished by some preconceived geological or linguistical facets, which through the course of time and some opportunistic maneuvers on the part of community living got transformed into some preconditions that became the defining factors for the current trends of politics. With this very advancement in the political turf, basic mechanism of promulgation of prominence, ideologies and designs like colorful pennants, emblems and symbols came to the fore. And thus, interpretations of age-old tenets started getting handed down from generations to the every succeeding one.

              Bit by bit, religion got assimilated in the strategies of politics, but only to serve the very few chosen ones who would look to cash in on the benign attributes of psychologically weaker lot of the community; religion thus by becoming an integral part of the political schemes got itself deviated from its original alignment of providing a feasible solutions, more often psychic in nature, to the misdemeanors that sometimes the ever-wrathful nature would cast upon the ever-listless spectrums of human civilization scattered all across the globe that was still politically nascent, emotionally naïve and strategically natal in every respect.

            No doubt, the modern current of politics acquired its form from the far-reaching aspirations of the Greco-Roman traders set out to reach the "Spice Garden of India" followed by the later explorers like Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama. Then by the time the world began to learn the significance of inter-continental trade affairs in the thirteenth and fourteenth century, Europe dived into the waves of geological explorations as the Portuguese and the Dutch tradesmen set sails with a view to reaching out to the world unseen, followed by the Imperial prowess of the British Empire. In this context, two of the most significant explorations were – Vasco da Gama’s reaching Calicut in 1498 and Columbus’ America exploration in 1492, each epitomizing Europe’s extending the farthest reaches in both the hemispheres. From then on, the mercantile nature of mutual exchanges of Europe started creeping into the veins of the two still politically incipient continents. Afterwards, India got swamped in the struggle against British despotism and its affiliate British East India Company, and on the other hand, North America got involved in its own gruesome Civil War (1861-65) between the Union and the secessionist Confederacy. On the eastern front, China did everything it could to disband the western traders so that the illicit supply of opium into its fortresses on the eastern province could be dismantled, and the much documented Opium Wars broke out in the mid-nineteenth century between the British Empire and the then Chinese rulers, the Qing dynasty. Meanwhile, Europe in itself got busy in dealing with several socio-economical dissents, political imbalance and the issues involving efflorescence of educationists and sensibility, across the continent. Even the all-potent British islands had to get over the secessionist movements. By the time the world had to endure the ravages of the two World Wars in the twentieth century, the world politics had already adapted to the language of mercantile ends of international diplomacy, while vast reservoirs of crude oil underneath the earth in the Middle-East was brought to the fore of mainstream intercontinental conflicts. Of course, the economically developed ones with envious GDPs were ready to take advantage of such a one-sided battle, and thus the world got dissected into two prominent classes of nations – the Developed ones, the permanent members of the United Nation’s Security Council, and the other still eking out even a commonplace living, the Developing ones, which also included the most deprived corners of the globe, the so-called Third World, just as the ones mulling under heavy wages of penury in India, the below-poverty-level sections sprawled all over the country. Thus, slowly but maturely, the economic world got divided into the Haves and the Have-nots, the irrefutably invincible sects of rulers, political or financial, and the ever-doomed paupers, the profiteering stakeholders and the gullible scapegoats. But the irony is that even though all the worldly humanistic fund-procuring organizations apparently seem to be doing their best in order to provide the rudimentary amenities indispensable for existence to the most wretched chunks of human settlements, the ridge between the rich and the poor keeps widening with every passing day.

          Now, while discussing as to the dubious nature of modern politics and its diabolical impact upon common man, we must look into our own nation, the home to about 1.3 billion people in the Sub-continent, that has come far from its blood-stained stigmas inflicted by British bondage. After the ‘Tryst with destiny’ in 1947, it has seen through many ups and downs, many a calamitous warfare against its neighbours, to stand tall in the precinct meant to determine the international policies of trade, of course owing much to its open-trade initiatives adopted at the very outset of the current millennium.

            Yet, India suffers, writhes silently in the wake of the guilefully managed self-securing strategies and schemes of the ever-increasing number of political parties and their factions, each trying the best to generate a conflict between the most vulnerable sections of humanity, and thus keep them busy in blood-spilling fights that are to be reported by the paid media services only to exacerbate the already turbulent situation: to hide a heinous financial scam, some craftily staged rumours of national threats is promulgated all around; to keep the seemingly inquisitive and suspicious yet perspicacious minds busy, some classified ‘secrets’ are re-conjured; to remain safe in power along with a stable influx of funds from various sources into some anonymous bank accounts in some foreign nations, some reportage or exposé type fabricated documents or files are circulated among some sycophant media houses that keep inquisitive eyes busy in search for the traces of available sources of information that may lead to the concocted stories; to continue to be at the helm of the lucrative portfolios, even some petty resort of communal differences is availed of; to prove ones deservedness, the reasons of others’ susceptibility to damnation are always there to abide by the former one; to be safe with a tacit status-quo, if not a stand-off, a simple theory of quid-pro-quo of power is omnipresent which helps one to remain unhurt in the Centre and other in its region, provided the former has to pretend as if acting or performing the way the latter might not have wished it to do so and the vice versa – a simple sport of subtle mutual understanding at the expense of the blockheaded populace. But the easiest of all is to keep shouting diatribes and staging up derogatory histrionics against each other so that the emotionally poised sidekicks and every other acolyte inclusive of all the obdurate party-supporters will have something to chew on as to how ‘anti-corruption’ their dear leaders are. Buying veneration and panegyrics from the established educationists of the society by means of showering monetary grace upon the praise-thirsty ‘high thinkers’ has become another mode of winning the trust of thousands of their disciples at the grass-root level. One thing that has become clear that the shameless trickery of profit-mongering politics has not only played a masterly deception upon the laymen but also intrigued the most erudite of minds.