Dushyant Arora

BJP

Narendra Modi

Kejriwal

Maneka Gandhi

Cabinet

Justice JS Verma Committee

Janata

Arvind Kejriwal

Congress

Politicians may or may not work, but they make sure they are ‘seen’ workingAt a get-together in Delhi a few months ago, apolitician was trying to convince a French national that the Indian prime minister was indeed a great leader. He cited two instances: how the PM had intervened to help a person who was facing problems at a passport office; and how the PM helped a teacher, who was struggling to get her dues. The BJP leader also revealed that the PM had hardly any time to sleep.The French national was astonished, but not for the reasons you would expect. “Is there a manpower shortage in your country? Why is the prime minister doing the job of a passport official or a civil court? Doesn’t he already have a lot on his plate? No wonder he sleeps so little. Then, who is doing the work that a prime minister needs to do?” she asked.The politician, who thought the message he was trying to convey may have been lost due to language barrier, replied, “That’s not the case. There are many people working at the Prime Minister’s Office. They do the responding, the PM only supervises.”“But, if that is an efficient system, why not shut down all the passport offices and the courts and have the PMO do everything?” the woman asked. At this point, the politician, visibly annoyed, excused himself. The woman turned to me and asked whether she had missed anything. I asked her if she had seen any Indian movies. She had not, and wondered what movies have to do with the conversation.The fact is, we Indians love heroes. We are constantly declaring someone or the other as the next savior/hero and the provider of solutions to all our problems. Anna Hazaare,, Arvind, Kanhaiya Kumar… When these heroes fail, we feel he/she wasn’t the one we thought would be, and look for the next one.We tell each other, if only my hero was in charge, things would have been different. Of late, politicians have understood our desperate need for a ‘hero’, and invest a great amount of time doing ‘heroic’ things. Institutions be damned.I was reminded of the aforementioned discussion when, the Union minister for women and child development, tweeted earlier this week that any woman who is harassed over the internet, could write her an e-mail or tweet to her with a certain hashtag, and she would facilitate resolution of her grievances.What followed was a deluge of tweets from men about why they weren’t being treated ‘equally’, since there was no helpline/email for them. I’ll save my opinion on this colossal misunderstanding about the idea of equality for another column.“Maneka Gandhi takes on cyber trolls,” roared one national newspaper. Another newspaper claimed that she will “bring such complaints to the notice of the National Commission for Women”. Bear with me as I ask a few questions that don’t seem to be obvious to anyone else.1 Why is aminister doing the work of a local police station? Are we now going to divest cyber cells of the police of their jurisdiction in the matter?2 Will the minister’s office have time left for macro policy decisions, given how rampant harassment is on twitter?3 Assuming it is a great decision, why aren’t women who are harassed offline being given the same privileges?4 Why should someone who is harassed in the street be compelled to deal with the local police chowkie, while those on social media reach the Cabinet minister directly?5 If all that her office will do is “draw the attention of the relevant authorities”, why add yet another link in the chain? Surely the Cabinet minister’s office isn’t a post box?6 Should reports of petty crime be addressed to the Home Minister, and complaints regarding poor roads to the Urban Development Minister? Which minister does one approach for blocked sewages?7 Why hasn’t the report of thebeen implemented? Why aren’t police reforms being implemented by all states? Why doesn’t the matter of ‘police reforms’ not occupy enough space in our narratives? Because you see, it isn’t half as ‘heroic’. No glory in talking about creating healthy and sustainableinstitutions.The entire episode also reminded me of thedurbars started by, wherein he decided to personally meet people and resolve their grievances. The first time this ‘durbar’ was convened, according to reports, about 50,000 people converged on the venue and the crowds went out of control. The police had to escort Kejriwal out of the venue. What was he thinking?The one lesson political parties have learnt from the fall in the fortunes of theis, whether one does any work or not, it is critical to continuously appear to be doing work, do things that draw the news and the cameras.My advice is, please don’t fall for such gimmicks. Let’s hold our politicians accountable to more than merely an appearance of doing something. As a cola commercial puts it: “Dikhaave pe mat jaayen, apni akal lagaayen”.