The battle of faces but for issues that concern us

Mint editorial has the following to say in response to induction of Kiran Bedi by BJP in Delhi CM race.

Bedi is being seen as the answer to Arvind Kejriwal. If faces could change governance, then Bedi and Kejriwal would have made all the difference to Delhi.

Delhi is a megalopolis with problems that don’t have easy solutions. Its consumption of water and electricity is way beyond what it produces. Every summer, their shortage creates a crisis-like situation. None of the parties has a clear idea of how to solve this.

An election campaign that is so focused on personalities is unlikely to pay attention to the problems. As in other elections in India, the emphasis is to win first and think later.

Read more at: http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/Lo4XZPg9qejrwpK9jQVrJK/The-battle-of-faces.html

I disagree. If the mere problem of good governance was solving issues 'at hand' then a bureaucracy would have sufficed to run a country. And that was the precise mistake we made in the last two elections by electing a stellar bureaucrat Manmohan Singh to power.

The challenge is to have a leadership which can not only solve concurrent issues but envisage what the nation needs to grow beyond the present and immediately eminent future. A leadership which can not only anticipate but also lead and inspire a nation towards a greater future than what chance affords it. To do this, you need men (and women) of vision, integrity and conscience, running the government.

The precise problem with the UPA government was that it had too few of those people in government (notably Jairam Ramesh, P Chidambaram, Nandan Nilekani) and more so, most of them were sidelined by the demagogues who ran the government amock for personal gains.

What the country needs is a clash of personalities. A nation is made not by what systems it runs or what issues it solves, it is made by people who run it!

And so we need more able gentry and intelligentsia to join politics and let there be a clash of personalities!!

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Leaderboard Image Credit: The Indian exponent @flickr

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