Why Politics?

Why Politics?

At the outset, I want to state that I am writing this piece for myself, because I want to answer this question for myself and in a manner that is convincing to me. If I am myself not convinced then I would never be able to convince others. Many thoughts and ideas float through my head but I need to consolidate my ideas through my writing and that is the attempt in this article.

Firstly it may sound very clichéd, but I do not know when or why I fell deeply, madly and irreversibly in love with my country. I remember when as a child I sat and watched “Kahan Gaye who Log” and later “Param Veer Chakra” and idolized Sharukh Khan in  “Fauji”. In my mind as a child I figured that the best way to serve my country was to become a soldier, which I did by joining the National Defense Academy right after class 12^th as an Air force cadet. As luck would have it, I suffered a service injury and had to leave the forces after 3 years and that left a huge void in me, a void that kept growing as I completed my M.B.A and joined the corporate sector.

A visit to my native state of Uttar Pradesh, in India in 2006 changed all that when my father in law proposed to donate his ancestral land to build an Undergraduate college in a backward district of Uttar Pradesh where no institution of quality learning existed and girls especially had no access to education. All he asked of me was seed funds and expertise in terms of working with the government as well as banks on approvals and loans. I saw that as an opportunity to contribute to public service and get back a sense of serving my country. I agreed and over the next 3 years, I, my wife and my father in law built “Gurukul” together, a dream to provide quality education at low cost to the poor. These initial years’ entailed immense hardships both financially and physically with all the financial requirements being fulfilled by our salaries and meager savings plus the fact that it effectively took all the spare time that we had as a family. I believe that it was only the fact that at this time, I knew my wife for 8 years already, that helped us get past this phase.

The efforts bore fruit as we started our first batch in 2008 with over 80% girls and all of them belonged to the scheduled castes. Later in 2008, I had to travel to U.S. in a professional capacity and my role in Gurukul was revised to strategizing and fund raising.  As Gurukul gained popularity and students, especially girls, who never had access to quality education started showing 100% results, I realized that “Gurukul” was the platform through which I could continue my fight for my country by combating educational inequity in India which for me was at the heart of many social evils plaguing India. The thought convinced me to return to India, but also made me realize that I needed to hone my skills in the education sector if that would be my vocation going forward. I hence joined "Teach For India" in 2010, as a training platform for developing my skills and knowledge about education in India. At "Teach For India", my classroom experience in a low income private school in year 1, my internship with homeless children and subsequently teaching them in year 2 introduced me to the most deprived children of my country, whom I call the “Last Child”.

I realized that working on the issues of the “Last Child” evoked in me a sense of passion, which I had last felt in the Air Force.  Hence post my fellowship, I took up an offer to lead a project nationally that was being undertaken by the Supreme Court commissioner’s office to inform the recommendations for inclusion of marginalized children in the “Right to Education (RTE)” act and for framing the “National Policy for the Urban Homeless”, which were being worked upon in the National Advisory Council. The project involved working with 8 state governments to open shelters for the homeless adults and residential schools for street children as per the guidelines developed by the Supreme Court Commissioners Office. This experience allowed me to travel across the length and breadth of my country and made me realize the simple fact that the real ability to cause change at a large scale lies not with a NGO, not with a University, not with a Business BUT with the government. I truly believe that what a good government servant can achieve in his/her tenure is much more than any of the other institutions. The largest businesses in India are just a few billion $ whereas the government is 1000 times bigger than the largest of businesses and reaches 1000 times more people than the largest NGO’s. Hence for me it was clear that if I have to have a say in shaping the India of tomorrow then I have to be a part of the government, as we may like it or not, the institution of government is the most powerful that man ever invented and it is here to stay. Hence if we dislike certain aspects of the institution then we have to engage with the system to change the system instead of just fighting it or criticizing it. As Gandhi ji taught us; “We have to be the change that we want to see in this world”.

Once it was clear to me that I had to join the government, the question came whether to do that as a bureaucrat or as a politician. In my work with the NAC as well as the Supreme Court Commissioners, I realized that the ultimate decision makers in the government were the politicians and if I wanted to lead change then I would be much better served as a politician than a bureaucrat.

At this point, I want to say a word or two about Politics. I truly believe it is a very honorable profession. A politician plays a very important role in a society. A politician is someone who takes up the responsibility of representing the issues of the people and is ready to invest the time and the resources in getting those issues resolved. In return the politician gets a modicum of social prestige, respect and if elected then formal authority to cause change. A politician is also someone whom the society elects to make the difficult, sometimes unpleasant decisions that the individual members of the society would rather not do themselves as they do not want to have the bear the pain or the moral consequence of those decisions, such as punishing someone, imposing fines or waging war. The society also uses the politician as a pressure valve to vent their anger over all that might not be correct in the society and for which they need to find someone to blame, ergo, then the perfect person is the local politician. The local politician is at the same time respected, feared and hated, a trichotomy that for me aptly describes the different expectations and roles that a politician has to play in a society.

With the plan to become a politician firmly etched in my mind, I, just like before, decided to get some formal training in this field. That is when I decided to attend the Mason program at the Kennedy School that helped me learn with senior bureaucrats and politicians from across the world.  The Kennedy School broadened my insights but also my confusion. It opened me to the world of the U.N., the IMF, the World Bank and many such multilateral organizations. I also met many Indian politicians who were “Technocrats” i.e. highly skilled in their knowledge areas but had never contested elections but had rather been nominated. This confused me further.

However a simple conversation with my wife Pooja, solved these dilemmas for me. She asked me a simple question, which took me to the beginning; She asked me why I am doing this in the first place? I answered that I wanted to serve India again. She pushed further and asked; what I meant when I said, I wanted to serve India. I though about it for many days and finally the answer came to me. I wanted to see an India where no one slept hungry, where all children finished school, where every one had a roof over their head, where everyone had access to dignified employment, where all sick people had medicine, where all citizens felt safe, especially women and where if one worked hard then even the poorest could become the richest. This was an India of my dreams. As I worked through my thoughts, I realized that what I cared about the most in India were its people and their problems and if that was the case then the best way to learn about my people and their issues was to be an elected representative where I was directly accountable to those very same people. Where I was not dependent on individual favor but on the people who would determine my position by either voting for me or against me and that in turn would depend whether I was able to establish the links with my people and serve them well. Serving them would be serving India and the learning would hold me in much better stead when I held higher office than working in the UN or being directly nominated to the Rajya Sabha. I enjoy being with my people back in India. Talking to the parents of the children who study in “Gurukul”, getting involved in village issues, listening to young and educated Indians about their future plans or simply seeing my children grow up. I love people and I believe that in working with people, lays my greatest strength. Finally the decision was made, Politics it will be and electoral Politics it has to be!

Hence I took the plunge in January of 2014 by joining the campaign team of Rahul Gandhi ji in Amethi as in him I saw a leader who shared my values and in whom I saw the urge to change the status quo. I believe in him and decided that despite Congress being a non-entity in my state, I will work with the party to build local body institutions and help develop leaders from the ground up who tomorrow will graduate to state politics and then to National politics thereafter. That is the pathway I want to build in politics, from local to global, for me and for others who respect Politics as a noble profession and a platform to serve. I want to build a pathway for people who are willing to work towards their destinies, the hard way and are not in politics for a quick benefit. With my next assignment during Panchayati Raj elections in Uttar Pradesh in 2015, my journey has well and truly begun!