From part 2 of this series, there may be a notion that politicians cannot contribute because what they do is worthless. However the question remains on making money in spite of not contributing.
There are several possibilities. One that leads us to believe is the notion that they do make money, and, it has to be by some other means than the skills that they possess as politicians. They must point to the scenarios where none of them would be a ‘earned income’. Hence, entire politicking business can be viewed as nothing but making a profit or a loss depending on the political transaction.
A business transaction, as opposed to a political transaction, has a cost that needs to be absorbed by the transaction to make a profit. The price tag attached depends on the number of transactions needed to sustain the supply and demand. Extrapolating this to a political transaction, price tag depends on the eagerness to prioritize a need and the urgency of a need.
These needs are created for the people for their well-being if and when the politicians believe that they were chosen by the people to govern the needs of the people. It is easy to meet the needs of the people if those needs come out of a systematized living within the society. If the general living or the living conditions are chaotic, the needs will be chaotic and the true purpose of governing the needs gets downgraded to a sloppy crisis management on a daily basis. When this happens, a nation building exercise suffers the most.
Assuming indian labor consists of 95% unorganized labor, the problems to meet the needs of the people through a nation building exercise will have these issues on a daily basis and the path taken to build the nation will become a path through the maze.
At the national level, it becomes apparent that nation building exercise must address the unorganized labor as a priority to ensure the exercise yields the desired results within the desired time to make the exercise profitable to the nation. As with all the landscapes in a connected world, including the political landscape, the landscape changes are constant and may be even violent and chaotic. Therefore the nation building exercise cannot assume that it has got long periods of time at its disposal to complete the exercise. Unless there is a sense of urgency, these exercises may become a laughing-stock amongst the elite and the educated. The one who suffers would be those who surely are benefited by such an exercise – a common man, so to speak.
A loss at the national level is much more pronounced and visible than at the lower levels. If politicians are to be believed, then they should take this as a benefit for a common man and drop all the other factors like caste, creed and culture out of the equation or take up only those exercises that can cut through these differences.
Assimilation is important than aggregation; adaptation is more important than acceptance; building trust in people in the government is more important than building the nation. When the government is trusted, the support it gets becomes magnified and to helps it embark on tougher and meaningful exercises.