If i could, this is what i'd say to En Kay.
Actually, dear heart, your Primer for Obama, has been elevated to a Doctorate level and is in use in US Governance, even as we speak. In point of fact, the local MPs could take a few lessons from US Politicians on how to disguise naked greed for power and pelf, as patriotic duty. Reagan and his administration, Hollywood veterans all were able to change the course of a fairly egalitarian system and steer it into the Rule by the Privileged that the US is in now. And it was done with great subtlety, misdirection, special effects, [oh, dubya, carrier deck, flight suit, alfred e. neumann make up, you remember.] and damn good scripting. All very 21st century Bourne Conspiracy. And efficiently carried out.
The local MPs, on the other hand, seem to be still shooting masala movies. They haven't noticed that their audience has become hipper. The Local MPs still figure that their dishum dishum cinematic style will get them through to the masses. And that's their weakness. India has become a lot hipper - across the board. Literacy is no longer sufficiently defined as the ability to read and write. The various visual media extant have allowed the uneducated to become much more sophisticated in their choosings. But that's in private. If political change is to come to India, i think that it will come only when the average overly courteous Citizen Sunil, doesn't think it bad manners to disagree with anyone [putative] higher than him. And, of course, is able to do so with no fear of retribution. Maybe if the Indian Civil Code can be used to sue errant politicians for breach of trust and broken contract.
Now, about the multiplicity of the voices clamoring for attention. I wish the US had a multiplicity of voices being represented. But the US is too impatient and crass for that. They [we] prefer to boil things down to simple yes or no answers so that they can get back to their obese pursuit of the American Way. Truth and Justice have fallen victim to this distillation of concepts into numbered commandments. [Quite against the Constitution(US) in fact.] India's multiplicity of voices and their representation might well be Her saving grace. Truth, after all, is that which most of us agree is the truth. India's leaders need to synthesize the voices in their ears. And, yes, that is not going to happen. To be able to synthesize They need to learn to listen. And nobody, but nobody, with the exception of perhaps Simi Garewhal, listens. Not even if we use loudspeakers. Perhaps it is because the training in satyagraha and fasts unto death have put body language in the ascendant.
just saying.
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