On Politics And Family

In this story, I will try to establish the connection between politics and family. In the Indian subcontinent, there is a familiar mentality among people that their offsprings will be drawn into a profession which they themselves aspired to do but could not. In some cases, children have forced into the profession that the parents are into. All sorts of coaxing go into this process of literally thrusting down the parent's choice into the children’s lives. This mentality comes from a family business perspective that people generally have. For example, if a person is a businessman having a shop, then their children are expected to also be the next generation businessman of that shop (if it is a flourishing one). This somehow kills the aspirations of the child. For me, I believe it is a cushion that their children can fall back upon if they cannot or somehow fail to pursue their own dreams.

But it should be limited to that. This thought is somehow extended to other professions also. For instance, a doctor’s or an engineer’s or a lawyer’s children is expected to follow suit of their parents. Now, this becomes utterly dangerous on many occasions. The ultimate culmination of this happens when politicians also expect their children to become politicians. Now politics is not a profession, it is merely a public service. This fact somehow is not understood by most politicians, so unfortunately they also force politics upon their children. This is the root cause of many corruption in today’s political scenario. So in order to get out of this, we have to get out of this family business mentality not only in politics but in all spheres of life.