To BE is to be in the B-team today. So it is right if a politician stings like a bee and leaves the A-team to join the B-team because BEEing there is to BE in the middle of everything. Yes, this is a time when even ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’ has decided to have some sort of an epistemological roll-over and reinvent itself to be ‘Baa Baa Be sheep’. The buzz words today are all having a b in them… I want to be the CM or I’ll be with you if I get a ticket. Political India is buzzing like a bee indeed.
Even Kejriwal tells BEdi: I’d like to BE in a debate with you. And BEdi answers: I’d rather BE in the Assembly first. Well, as I said, the B-word is at the top today.
Isn’t every political party saying that the other is a B-team of some other party? AAP becomes a B for Congress if we listen to the insistent saffron chants, BJP becomes a B for the Congress if we see the massive exodus from Rahul baba’s kindergarten to modi’s swachch kitchen, and Congress is of course a B for just about anyone who wants to accept it. NCP is desperate to be a B but then so is shiv Sena. Let’s not forget the Ammas, Didis, behen jis, Taus, neta ji and everyone else who wants to be something because they see a future in B. Yes, B teams are indeed far more powerful than any A-team in India. Some have even remarked that with so many names casually walking away from AAP to join the BJP, the latter is actually as good as a B-team of the former in Delhi’s limited political circles.
Why leave activism behind? Activists are already accelerating their way into politics just as journalists and bureaucrats and servicemen… thus making politics the effective B-team of governance, protestors, anarchists, and fighters. Lawyers, teachers, and jurists were already there.
The one question that needs to be addressed now is: Was politics ever anything but a B-team for someone/something or the other? Everything seems to be starting with A but finally meandering along a convoluted path that defies explanation only to emerge as a B-player for some other party or ideology. Yes, even ideologies have evolved to becoming a glorious B-thought to have a better existence.
But let me come back to a query put a lit while earlier… who are the real A-team members in politics? I remember someone meekly saying: ‘The goons.’ No, I don’t think the goons are really so loyal even to their own self… they are, in fact the first ones to hop on to any vessel that has a better probability of staying afloat. So it cannot be the goons… and it cannot be the buffoons as well. The reason is that irrespective of their category, anyone who cares to label himself or herself a politician is actually entering an assembly of buffoons.
As a voter who do I vote for? My favourite B-team of-course. So choose well… and vote for the right buffoons this time. India needs its daily dose of entertainment.
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Isn’t every political party saying that the other is a B-team of some other party?
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Arvind Passey
21 January 2015
