Modern politics and Mom’s kitchen
“You may fool all the people some of the time; ... some of the people all the time; but you can't fool all of the people all the time.” -Abraham Lincoln
It was early 2000s when in my hometown, Ahmadabad, there opened a little restaurant chain called “Mom’s kitchen”. Well, there was nothing historic about this event but there was certainly something iconic about it. Mom’s Kitchen was just like any another restaurant serving spicy Indian food. The way food was served had nothing special but the way food was prepared was really different. It never happened before in history of Indian food restaurant industry, at least in my knowledge. The restaurant had an open kitchen where you can actually enter in the kitchen, where food is being prepared and you can talk to chef and talk about your preferences, ask them to prepare food in a particular manner, and see what is the quality of the food being. In simple words, you are seeing what you are going to eat tonight. For me, it was idea of real democracy.
India, being world’s largest democracy and US being world’s oldest democracy has something in common, curious people. Actually human is a curious animal. We would always like to know what is happening around and moreover, why is that happening. When the questions are not answered or people are told that there are certain things that they don’t need to know then that produce lack of trust. It is really most dangerous thing for democracy. The political age that we are living in right now is not actually exposing true colors of democracy; we can call it semi-democratic environment or may be pseudo- democratic environment. Where you can choose who will lead you but after that you do not have any control over whatever they do. These modern day politicians are exactly like regular traditional restaurants. You can choose what restaurant to go and what to eat. But you do not have control over what quality of ingredients they use and how they prepare food. They do everything behind the closed doors and you have no idea what is going inside. Just order the food and wait for it to be delivered. Restaurants are still better because, if you don’t like the food then you can decide right away not to come to this place again ever. In politics, you have to wait for 4 to 5 years to make a decision again.
There was a time in 50s and 60s when media was totally controlled by the Governments and what people saw was actually what politicians want them to see. Believe me; they are very good at that. Somebody said it so right “politics is show business of ugly people”. But with information flowing all around the internet, it will get tougher and tougher for people to control the information. Information will find its own way to be exploded; let it be Wikileaks, YouTube, Blogs or twitter.
Story of these online phenomena is also a very live example of new democracy. There used to be many websites, which used to host videos far before YouTube. There was nothing particularly wrong with these websites. The content was good enough and video quality wasn’t that bad either. The only reason YouTube surpassed everything on internet video sharing is power that people got with YouTube. YouTube was the very first website to offer video uploading to users. As it says in its tagline “Broadcast yourself”. Same hypothesis remains true for Twitter. When you can follow your favorite authors and stars and people, you admire and directly communicate with them, who need those media reports in between?
Anybody ever wondered why a website with a very primitive looks and traditional blue links with no sophistication in design can drive more traffic than web giants like eBay and Amazon together? Yes, I am talking about Craig’s list. The only reason behind Craig’s list is that you get to see what you are buying and you get to meet the seller. A true democratic model, nobody in between. No bank, no website authority, no USPS, no FedEx, no PayPal. That is how Governments should be run, totally transparent. No show business, no funny business.
When David Cameroon, Prime Minister of UK, spoke in TED conference last year, he was very right when he said accountability is what is lacking and can be achieved in today’s age of politics. He offered really radical ideas from information revolution to transparency. He said “If we combine right political thinking with the information revolution that is around us then we can create a historic model of transparency.” That is basic requirement of great governance.
As I said, Mom’s kitchen is not serving the best food in my town but the food served certainly brings a sense of trust and transparency and that, for me, is more important than taste. Politicians don’t need to be most lovable people with great oratory skills, but they need to be most transparent leaders. The day our policies would be as transparent as food coming from our Mom’s own kitchen, world would be a better place to live.
