Training classes for politicos: Hype or hope

To call spade a spade, it is a refreshing idea on the part of KCR to conduct a training camp for the public representatives of his party at Nagarjuna Sagar.One is only hopeful that it went on seriously and would prove to be a positively productive one in the days to come. One is compelled to go for this tone, for; very often the camps of this sort do not measure up to the hype generated.

It is true, it is not correct to single out the politicians alone, for the non-serious attitude towards the training camps. Even teachers and lecturers who are supposed to have love for ideas and an enduring enthusiasm for learning new things do not pay enough attention to the refresher courses that are conducted now and then for them.

Still one is optimistic that something of use had been taught and learnt at Sagar. This optimism springs from the fact that the de facto and dejure course director is a man of ideas with a missionary zeal, so much so that he had gone to the extent of saying that “Politics is not my cup of tea” and he strayed into it by chance. It is reported that there was a session on “Democracy’ in the agenda of the camp. Naturally, some philosophical underpinnings of democracy might have been touched upon.

More importantly, some practical side of politics might have been centre-staged so that next election is going to become a cake walk, despite some likely gap between the walk and talk galore of present promises. Given the tenor of political times, one can understand it, though not justify it. One is equally eager to know, whether there was any informed debate about the arbitrary exercise of power, which has become the norm of the day and which is bound to corrode the essence of democracy in the long run.

What is of particular interest to an idealist of golden Telangana is to know, had there been any message to the participants at any point of deliberations in a passionate way that the very spirit and essence of Telangana movement is “the protest against injustice” and “an innate urge for dissent” and “a quest for a socially just society” and an economic ambience, where equity of opportunities inform the policy frame of the government of the day.

It is in order, in this context to borrow a few lines from the “candid comments” of Prof K Nageshwar (The THI dated 6th May). He writes “Such political schools organized by TRS are at best polytechiniques that can polish the skills. But, they are not universities that can shape ideas and usher in changed mind sets. The battle for political change should continue. Ideas and skills should not be seen alike.”

In conclusion, the point in brief is, it is time the government initiated some concrete steps to reduce the gap between the precept and practice. It is high time, the political executive is intensely seized of the idea, with or with out reference to the training camps, that politics is a potent weapon to engineer a better society of democratic ambience, of opportunities of economic equity and a participatory plural polity, in which all have a similar stake.

By Yalamudi K