When you speak about elections in India pertaining to posts it can be bifurcated into two categories. One is functional, which elects Prime Ministers and Chief Ministers. Other is about filling individuals for junk posts like Governors and the President.PM and CMs logically par amounts importance as they hold on to these powerful executive positions to execute policies. The other like governors is completely inactive and is touted as retirement from active politics. But when you talk about the president symbolically he is the first citizen and commander in chief and becomes the face of the nation.
If presidential elections do not hold any water than why is it capitulated to such an immense media spotlight and heavy political shadow boxing. True the office of president is a titular post but it can be efficiently prepositioned into a good symbolic representation. Rather political outfits seize this opportunity to settle scores and maim it in to a useless slugfest for gaining an upper political brinkmanship.
The President is the first citizen. You can put him as a representative sample of the stock of a billion Indians. Perhaps if not very functional, we can at least make someone our commander in chief that can truly represent the spirit and bring out the underlying feeling of being patriotic to the interests of the nation.
When Abdul Kalam was made the President by the erstwhile ruling NDA under Vajpayee , he not only had an excellent track record inform of being the father of missile technology but also had a touchstone of humanity with honest attire and a selfless urge to serve the nation and even the society as a whole. His decision to return the office of profit bill back again for re examination was laudable.
President Abdul Kalam was an embodiment of every Indian idealism.
His aura as a scientist was imaged with developing missiles, his books appealed youths to think about the nation, his teachings inspired a sense of self determination and his presidency summed him up into a people’s King like epithet.
But his successor created a lot of noise just by the nomination. She was a sari clad woman and since a woman never had been a President before, this cemented all the parties and ceremoniously pushed her to the coveted Rashtrapati Bhavan. Her qualifications were actually a face of what our political class has based upon itself. She was on the board of a cooperative banks that had become bankrupt and her affinity to a class of politicians was too obvious. Closeness to political class was mired by other fallacies. A supposed land grabbing of a plot meant to be for the army, her son caught in the midst for cash for votes controversy, her Rs 200 crore lavish expenditure, allegations of mismanagement of a cooperative sugar factory and bankruptcy of banks run by her trust made her an anthesis of what Kalam represented for.
As an ugly garnishing on top of this criminalized pastry, was an appalling over expenditure in form of travels and trips which included her unnecessary coterie of family and friends. Agreed the President perhaps may be an illustration of just a titular showpiece of the nation. But yes you can choose someone who can radiate himself to shine and give a direction to the country’s interest. A company like ‘boost’ may increase sales by making Sachin its ambassador. So why can’t this simple marketing strategy be translated in to the same when you speak in terms of national interest where a man like Abdul Kalam can enhance the image of our country rather than someone like Pranab Mukherjee who again belongs to the same partisan political class which needs to be done away with.
Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, India’s erstwhile President was a simple and honest individual who’s birthday is celebrated as teachers day. But then we also had someone like Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed who on orders from Indira Gandhi signed to declare emergency and push the nation in its darkest days of democracy. We had both the extremities. Good and bad. We need to swing to the former side. We need to place a beautiful cherry on the top of our delicious multilayered cake called India. We need to make more presidents like Abdul Kalam to occupy this coveted post
