Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Dr. JP Calls Upon the Brightest to Enter Politics

Lok Satta Party President Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan (Dr. JP) has underlined the need for ensuring that the best of people enter politics since never before in India’s history the opportunities for resolving people’s problems are as many as they are today. “There are no problems, which are really intractable any longer, except old age and death, and perhaps taxes. In fact, most problems are amenable to simple, practical solutions, if only we leverage our strengths”.

Paraphrasing Charles Dickens, Dr. JP has said it is the best of times since we have the means and technology at our disposal to resolve people’s problems and it is the worst of times since we do not have many people who enter public office with competence, commitment, and integrity and with a passion for public service.

Addressing a gathering of software professionals and others on ‘Leadership in 21st Century India – Opportunities and Challenges’, Dr. JP today bemoaned that the conditions in India are so rotten that an eminent person like Dr. Manmohan Singh, roundly defeated in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections, had to go to distant Assam to become a Member of the Rajya Sabha by a false declaration of residence.

Dr. JP said: “We, as a society, have enormous strengths. But as a society, building, nurturing, and developing leadership is certainly not one of them”.

Dr. JP said large sections of people feel that everybody in government -- politicians, bureaucrats, judges -- is a scoundrel -- and generalize that all rotten people in the country go into politics and all good people stay back. “Shunning politics and public office with such notions is, however, unwarranted and irrational. There are some very fine people in government just as there are very fine people in other walks of life. It is, therefore, absurd to conclude that scoundrels enter government and saints stay away”.

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