Ethics in Politics

Business Ethics & Corporate Governance- Sec -E

Submitted By- Rahul Chandalia ( 08BS

0002495 )

For : Prof. TMC Varadarajan

 Ethics in Politics

Ethics concerns itself with the study of what is right and what is wrong.
Various teachers through history have attempted to explain what ethics is
and how ethics should work. The best procedure to study ethics is in its
historical matrix.

Politics encompasses a wide variety of activities, from government elections

and office holding to public policy and expressing ideological beliefs. For
each of these actions, there are ethical considerations and consequences.

No discipline is more visible, thus political ethics is a hotly debated and very
public arena.

Indeed, the difference between ethics and politics seems to me artificial, if

there is a significant difference at all. Sometimes the distinction is a matter
of scale. If one guy robs you, it's ethics, but when 435 people rob you, its
politics--or the House of Representatives is in session. But surely the
deliberations of that body are subject to ethical analysis. What's more,
politics can be a necessary expression of ethics. Often the only way to
achieve an individual ethical goal is through group endeavor--i.e., politics.

Some political questions are not essentially ethical but a matter of two
competing interests, each with a morally legitimate claim. Politics is the
highest form of all social activities. It involves the understanding and
knowledge of the state and the craft of conducting it. Since the inception of
this phenomenon, several approaches to its study have evolved which are
speculative, prescriptive, or even scientific in nature. Ethics as a relative
study has always remained associated with politics, either conjointly or
adversely. When it was said that politics is a profession of scoundrels, it
completely dissociated ethics from politics and considered it to be an act of
disaster! Law then came to its rescue and thus started a never-ending saga
of politico legal affair. Social structure and value system have shaped law to
its various forms at different civilizations. The conflicts between the two
forces have been a constructive force in social action and the ultimate
formation of a just and strong society.

By all means, politics is a dirty game. It is not a game of definite rules.

Politics is exactly like a free-wrestling game; you can use everything; you
can kick, punch, slap, or even kill. And if you killed, your lawyers can free you
safely because it is a game. And once the game has started, you can never
change the rules.

The two pieces of advice I can give to you, as an expert player in the dirty
game, is either you leave the dirty game for the dirty players who can never
change their filthy style, or for the stubborn players who are ready to kill or
to martyrize so that cleanliness may prevail. The second one is if you chose
to play, never leave the battlefield, NEVER!!!!

“If experience teaches us anything at all, it teaches us that a good politician,

under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.”

Ethics and Politics are usually seen with a relationship whereby one's ethics
decide one's politics. What you think is moral and immoral determines what
you think should be legal and illegal. I don't exactly think of it like that. The
relationship between ethics and politics is the same as the relationship
between truth and deception. Politicians find ethics inconvenient just as liars
find truth inconvenient. Politics and lies deliberately conceal and negate
ethics and truth.

Political language is a language of lies. All political words reflect this. When
you see a political lie, translate it to an ethical vocabulary. By doing this, you
can make anyone who habitually uses political lies look like an idiot by using
an equivalent ethical truth.

One of the main weaknesses in most plans to upgrade the condition of

humanity through the creation of innovative political systems is that there is
usually no innovative "companion" plan to upgrade and maintain the ethical
standards of the citizenry to be involved. No political system--no matter how
humane in its design and intent--can fulfill its own idealistic promise unless
all of its citizens, both on the leadership level and in the rank and file,
maintain consistently high standards of ethics. Ethics is more fundamental
than jurisprudence for the proper functioning of politician.

That is to say, ethics is at the basis of both sound politics and economics.
Ethics is essential for the health (Politics) and wealth (economics) of a
community.
 Caselet
Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh had a reputation for instilling in its cadres
certain traits, like discipline, character and a spirit for social service. It was
considered that BJP which drew its cadres mainly from RSS was thus made of
superior human material.

Even from the angle of communalism, the general view was that people from
RSS owing, as they do, allegiance to Hinduism, might be excessively zealous
but were not fanatics. They could show greater flexibility and tolerance
towards others, as was amply proved during the BJP led NDA regime.

On the whole, while most people went along with the description of BJP as a
non-secular party, they considered that, because of the RSS influence, BJP
could be considered as having a much greater proportion of disciplined,
service-oriented and ethical leaders placing service above self.
Lately, this formulation about the BJP is increasingly being shown up as a
myth.
It was Shankar Singh Vaghela of Gujarat who probably dealt the first
spectacular blow to RSS's character building propensities .More recently,
Madanlal Khurana, Uma Bharti and Kalyan Singh have demonstrated their
inability to place discipline, party and public interest above the demands of
their inflated egos and love for power.

The voter, however, made these leaders smell dust shattering their self-
made images. The voters’ solitary rebuff in these cases is not being seen by
other egotist leaders as a general vote in favour of discipline and principles
in as much as the trend is not showing signs of being stemmed.
Other bigger egos are coming forward to expose themselves. I have Bhairon
Singh Shekhawat in mind.
Whatever fate he meets and leads the party to meet, I do admire the party
standing firm and not yielding to him. Conflicts arising from personal issues,
like the son is being not accommodated, for example, do not constitute
issues of principle. What encourages unprincipled politics is undoubtedly the
willingness of competing parties to welcome so called rebels into their fold.

The most unfortunate aspect of today's party politics is that the only thing
that matters to a party is its numbers in the legislature, howsoever
constituted. A person in BJP may be proclaimed by Congress as blatantly
communal but the moment he joins Congress, he becomes pure secular. The
voter fully realizes this but is unable to act immediately. So the politicians
can make hay while the sun shines and go on descending from depth to
depth. The country of course is nobody's business. But hope never dies.