About time we cheer the leaders we elect!

The more a prostitute sells her services, the more customers she gets, and the worse her reputation becomes.  

A politician is elected by us. His job is to practice politics. The more he does it, the more he is vilified!

Same difference!

Let's expose our hypocrisy. 

Why Do We Celebrate Some and Mock Others? 

Let's look at a cricketer or a CEO. 

In a match he watches two things at once: the scoreboard and a ball that can swing or spin off an uneven pitch. And he still has to score runs.  

We understand how hard that is. So we reward him with cheerleaders, stadium ads, and million-dollar endorsements. The better he plays, the bigger the rewards.

It’s the same for a CEO. He juggles shareholders, stakeholders, and market dynamics. For that, he gets pay, perks, prestige, and bonuses. More the business, more the goodies.

Now one look at Politics and our hypocrisy is seen. 

The moment voting ends, the winner is sworn in, and we declare our democratic duty “done.”  

Then for the next five years, we start demanding miracles.

But a politician’s job is harder than a cricketer’s or a CEO’s.  

He has to do everything at once:

1. Deliver welfare and stay connected with the public.

  

2. Manage Parliament  because good intentions can be killed by parliamentary arithmetic.

 

3. Make policy that is constitutionally sound, socially acceptable, culturally compatible, economically feasible, technologically viable, parliamentarily passable, legally defensible, and geopolitically prudent. All at the same time!

It’s like solving a Rubik’s Cube that never ends. Fix one face, and another gets scrambled.

To make it worse, even the most powerful leader must still depend on the people below him.  

While cameras and criticism stay on the top, it’s the low-level officials who actually run the country’s lifeline, possibly through indifference, bad interpretation, or poor implementation - all that can derail public welfare.

This is the bureaucracy, a hardened block - obstinate, inflexible, powerful, unelected, often selected by the earlier regimes. 

Individually they look ordinary. Collectively, they’re extraordinarily intelligent but often show zero common sense.  

And when things fail, the anger falls on the elected leader, not on them.

So, even as the cricketer or the CEO becomes a demi-god, the politician becomes the devil.

It should bother anyone with a robust sense of fairness:  

A politician stays away from home, works long hours under media glare, operates inside rigid rules, cedes power to career bureaucrats, trades popularity for tough decisions, needs opposition support for national projects, and is still expected to deliver! 

Ouch!

And how do we repay him?  

We lampoon him in cartoons, make him the butt of jokes, roast him in stand-up comedy circuits, and assume he’s guilty until proven innocent.

In the final reckoning, Karma 101 strikes: We get the government we deserve!

The time has come to free our minds.  

Let’s start by giving a free hand to those we ourselves elect.  

Because right now, we only see the power they have but not the weakness of those in public offices.

Wouldn't that be fair?