When I was a kid, I remember elected politicians switching parties like crazy depending on who offered a better deal. And everybody knew that such deals were going on. One politician was referred to as "aaya ram, gaya ram" (aaya meaning to come, and gaya means to leave--characterizing how the politician, ram, entered and left parties. Hilarious it was to some extent, more so when we did not have television to entertain us ....
The Economist has a neat statistic about India:
The country’s politicians are mostly an unsavoury lot. Of the 522 members of India’s current parliament, 120 are facing criminal charges; around 40 of these are accused of serious crimes, including murder and rape. Most Indian politicians are presumed to be corrupt, which is less surprising. In India’s poor and fractious society patronage politics is inevitable. But Indian politics has got much muckier in recent years because of two factors: the rise of regional and caste-based parties, nakedly dedicated to delivering patronage; and the mutinous coalitions this has led to.
It is disheartening that the 230+year old American democracy is not that different. In the last few weeks alone we have had everything from a long-time senator found guilty, to the latest nutcase "Senategate" in Illinois. Not much of a role model for many of the African countries struggling to establish democratic institutions ....
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