Dinesh Kamath's Editorial (Have schools to train budding politicians) that was published in Newsband

Have schools to train budding politicians

Somewhere in Bangalore someone has started classes to train women in politics. Some women, each from different walk of life, joined the class. Whether these women will succeed in becoming professional politicians is not the question. The best thing is that attempts are being made to involve women in politics in a big way.

In these classes, it was found that those women were not engaged in grassroots politics nor did they have any experience in governance. Hence the critics of such classes question as to how these women will manage to compete with rooted party workers who spend years doing constituency spadework?

Reservation policies have pulled many women into politics today. The number of women who are involved in politics today are much more than the number we would witness during the past. The reason politics is not an easier ladder, for men or women, is because most parties lack internal democracy and open primaries where the best candidate is given a chance, or where routes of advancement are made clear. Money and power influence party decisions. The system is further stacked against women, in terms of managing perceptions, networking and negotiating. How can the art of politics be learnt then?

The intangibles like leadership and decision-making can be transmitted in a classroom but practical politics can be grasped only by doing field work. There must be full-fledged postgraduate degree courses in practical politics of governance for all those who wish to enter parliament or legislature. After all, politics is not the same ball-game as business management. Hence the course structure would need a careful planning and implementation.

The tragedy of Indian politics is that it has acquired a demonic character in which there is no vision, no values, no principles and no ideological commitment. Politics in reality being a very serious business of making laws and governing a country and leading it on a path of unparalleled development, it needs dedicated, well-read, and principled politicians. Such schools can concentrate on instilling good ideas into political aspirants. It should be made clear to the students that they should avoid using dark methods and subterfuge in politics. Such schools if opened for both men and women will do a lot of good to Indian politics. Even those who have grown out of the rough and dirty politics of a chawl should be allowed to join such schools since they too have the latent potential for becoming big-time politicians. Many world famous universities have such schools. So why shouldn’t India too have such institutions?