AMBITION TO GREED TO JEALOUSY TO UNSCRUPULOUSNESS

As the circle narrows, animosities within it become sharper. Rivalries become more intense: for now, all that each has to do is to do two or three in, and he has the top job. Lust is rationalised: “But you have to have fire in the belly. Otherwise you shouldn’t be in this game.”

Insatiable ambition triggers unquenchable greed.

That greed incites unremitting jealousy.

And that compels ruthless maneuvers.

As others play by the rules, the one who has shed all scruple triumphs. A vital resource turns out to be the rivals’ respective reach into cabals beyond the party. The one who can garner more money from prospectors; the ventriloquist who can malign through surrogates and thereby frighten others in the circle — as he has a mass-base among half a dozen journalists; this kind of reach proves decisive.

Two consequences follow. Cunning, jealousy, unscrupulousness at the top permeate to every pore of the organisation. The party becomes, to pluck Toynbee’s words, “a moral slum”. True, some young idealists still join it. But by the time they rise to any position of authority, their edges have been rounded off, they have been fully domesticated — look not just at our political parties, look at the civil services. And this is the character of the whole that the people see. The party is thus delegitimised.

The process is hastened if by chance the party is swept into office. For such a bunch cannot but be venal and corrupt in office. But there is a twofold difference. When some individual is picking pockets at a railway platform, little happens even if he is caught: he is an individual; the infamy is confined to him. But when, as member of a party and government, he is caught, the entire party and government are tarnished. Second, we are all judged by the ideals we proclaim. As this party and government have come out of a crusade, as they have come to office proclaiming that they will clean up the mess, the stain is that much deeper.

... contd.