Are you political?

Are you political? Are you interested in politics? Which party do you support? These are some common questions that we all come across. People do ask me. More so after they read me.

Let me make some disclosure. I am interested in politics. I do have my preferences. Most of the time I find myself casting vote in favour of a particular party. But I definitely do not endorse everything the party does. I find all political parties to be good. As I cannot pick and choose portions from each, I find myself prioritizing the options. I do not use this medium to further any political party. I just reflect on the world around me, particularly Kerala.

Now, are you political? Are you interested in politics? I believe, everyone should be deeply interested in politics. It does not matter which party you support. It bothers me when someone says they do not care about politics. If you do not care about politics or find yourself in doubt, please do read further with an open mind.

It is undoubtedly clear that we need a system of governance and rule of law. We need it to engage with other countries, to protect our individual rights and belongings, for building and managing infrastructure for the public good and more. Humans evolved over centuries always discovering better ways of governance. Democracy seems to be the best way of governance, even with all its deficiencies. In a democracy, people get to present different approaches to governance and compete. The public gets to make their choice and elect their representative. They then get to be part of the elected government.

Democracy is a beautiful system when it works well. Unfortunately, democracy has many deficiencies and does not provide the best result always. Hence we have people questioning democracies. Questioning democracy is not bad. We should always be in a pursuit to find a better system and do change if we must. Till then Democracy is what we have.

How does each one of us approach politics?

We need a government that fundamentally respect each of our basic individual rights. I am talking about individuals, not people in collective. You, your spouse, parent, child, are all individuals and cannot be seen collective as a family. All of them has the individual right. There cannot be murder, marital rape, harassment and such within the family. We need a government that ensures rule of law within our family.

Once we step into our community, society and public at large, everyone’s basic individual rights should be protected. The collective interests can be there but not at the cost of an individual’s basic rights.

We should approach politics this way from individual rights to collective interests. We should be worried about corruption, political violence and atrocities. But that should not stop us from liking politics. We should be able to see collective interests in all political crimes.

We should openly welcome differences of opinion, consider alternate solutions, make our own choices and do support the best. We need not be wedded to a political party and be forced to justify everything the party does. We should keep an open mind to opposing views and do change. We do not hold all our childhood beliefs even now. We would not endorse all our actions when we were young. Likewise, we need not hold on to a political belief and party always. Be fluid, for individual rights and interests. Be political!