Everyone knows that people elect any candidate in elections for their welfare and development. Citizens want the candidate who is ready to listen to them and solve their issues. India is a diverse country with multiple ethnicities, a huge constitution and people with multifarious aspirations. So, it is natural to expect every leader to know the people, the constitution and the country very well. Leaders must have the pulse to identify not even the present problems but the future developmental challenges of people. A leader must be aware of every ground level situation of the constituency and should be able to make people feel that they are one among them.
Now, let’s look at the back to back entry of celebrities in political parties just before election 2019 and how they got tickets immediately. Sunny Deol, Gautam Gambhir, Urmila Matondkar are such personalities who have suddenly become sympathetic to the country’s problems just before the election. A few days back, they were shooting for a film or playing cricket and today, they want to contest elections to serve/represent the people.
But, some questions arise in my mind. Have they ever visited any urban locality let alone village to learn about real public issues? Have they spent any time at the grassroot level which is must for every goodwill leader to serve people? I doubt whether they know anything about the constitution or their party’s ideology. How do they deserve to lead people without even meeting them once?
Today, politics has become a game for celebrities, where they enter for personal ambitions without any vision in mind. Even if we assume that they have good intentions, they don’t have the required knowledge and experience in the field. They are mostly ignorant of India’s polity, culture, and economy. For commoners, these celebs have always belonged to the high-class oblivious of real issues plaguing the country. In a usual scenario in order to garner votes, a candidate has to work really hard to create a positive influence on the voters, whereas these celebs get an easy pass because of their huge fandom. But isn’t this popularity superficial and a mockery of the democratic ethos of the constitution?
Of course, most of the political parties also do not care about anything except votes and therefore choose to give tickets to celebrities to use their popularity for votes. These political parties simply want to cash in on the undisputed popularity of these actors. Moreover, these celebs tend to disappear after elections, irrespective of winning or losing the elections.
I am not against actors turning into politicians. What I am trying to convey through this article is that such celebrities should consider politics as a career of responsibility and selfless service. They should first prove their credentials by doing some work at the grassroots level; they should also make sure that they remain constantly in touch with the people so that they are able to understand their issues better.
People should also analyze if a celebrity actually deserves to be voted to power or not, and exercise their right to vote judiciously. They should vote only deserving candidates without getting lured by the glamorous image of the celebs. If people will be rational in voting, then parties will also field rightful candidates to contest the elections.