Chennai: The Shreyan Hall at Swadeshi Mandir on the Wallajah Road here may be a bit too tiny and the audience numbers just about modest, but the task ahead set by the gathering of opinion-makers deserves encouragement. Young social activists hoping to be part of a positive change in India's threatened democracy have found a vibrant platform to launch their mission and hope to reach the goal despite the massive challenges and steep hurdles on the road.
The new platform, 'Next Gen Political Leaders' aims at tapping its human resources from senior students and young professionals, who would educate and propel the masses into defying the status-quo and demanding change for the better. Considering this has been the election season, the NGPL officials and volunteers have been actively involved in the last few months in taking up campaigns aimed at educating the voter to cast his/her vote for the right candidate and right party rather than get swayed by short-term gains by way of cash-for-vote deals.
With most of the election activity ending, barring the four Assembly by-elections being held just that day, this Sunday gathering that included some active politicians and even a couple of contestants for Lok Sabha seats, could hold a fruitful half-day session on improving the standards of electoral politics in the country. "This may be a small number gathered here, but remember the 1:10 formula to spread the gist of the discussions happening here to all your friends through the social media. You have at least 10 friends and each of them would have at least 10 friends, so the chain will go on. And the social media is very potent, tackles huge distances with no spending of money", said a speaker addressing the audience that included students, professionals and politicians of various parties.
TN election commissioner for cooperative societies, Natarajan, lamented that present-day political leaders "do not know history, economy and important issues concerning Tamil Nadu, cannot talk without prepared text and assistants to help". In such a dismal scenario, the NGPL must work towards building its army of well-informed leaders, said Natarajan, predicting that the political parties would, in course of time, have to necessarily turn to the NGPL stock for choosing their candidates to impress the electorate without having to depend on bribes to get the votes.
The array of speakers included CPI's T K Rangarajan, MP, who took pride in stating that his was the "only party that did not pay money to buy votes".
Retired Inspector General of Police A G Maurya, the north Chennai candidate of Makkal Neethi Maiyam, said his long stints as assistant commissioner and deputy commissioner in the region helped him to strike a chord with the voters. Strangely, the ex-cop did not think money was a major issue in elections. "I think money is not needed and political parties are bluffing they spent huge money. There must be a financial scam in all this. I spent just Rs 11 lakh for my campaign", he said.
Post-deliberations, the NGPL leadership resolved to speed up the process of educating the society to demand accountability from its political leadership and also create an educated and knowledgeable workforce to man the emerging political systems-the Next Gen Political Leaders.
