Mass Leaders In Democracy Poem by Rajendran Muthiah

Hail you all decreed leaders of graft
coming out of the jails on bails.
You grease the palms of the voters
and seize the power to sell the jobs
available in the government-mart for some lakhs.
Taking you as the model, the private institutions
are engaged in big-deals, for making
doctors and engineers in their commercial hubs.
You buy the dry lands for enhanced rates
and the realtors follow your trail to raise
the rates of plots and flats, and those
working in IT sectors and the cinema
are the easy victims to buy, borrowing loans
and leave the city by night, losing the job
and surrendering the flats of their choice to banks.

No amount of fine will make you sob
till with verve your minions the coffers rob.
Hail stones of charges can't hit mass leaders
and prick their conscience as they're resurgent
by talking regionalism or nationalism to survive.
The driver of the City-bus steers the vehicle
by paying a pittance of two lakhs.
A school teacher takes a piece of chalk
by losing around a sum of five lakhs.
But to an Assistant Professor, the rate fixed is high!
Just twenty five lakhs, as the next Pay Commission
approaches fast to raise the status of the salaried.
O my God! . The widows and destitutes fall in a line,
with a lakh in their wallet to bid the job of ‘a cook'
in the Noon-meals kitchen where eggs are sold.
To buy the posts of officers, the in-laws wait for long
before the ‘Palace of Corruption', the hostel for MLAs,
with bundles of currencies in suit-cases.

Our laws and constitution wake up
Only when some judges and officers
take the cudgels in their hands to stop the menace,
that frightens the life of the poor and the honest.
There is a leading brand of advocates
to save these shameless leaders
who aren't banned from continuing their trade
in politics, by having a coterie of hooligans around.
Seize the wealth they have amassed
and let them do trade in other fields.
They can flourish with their acumen
for which they have no matches.
Sand-mafia, granite-mafia and mafia-killers
receive the blessings of these mass-leaders
who are the ladders for the goons to go up in life.

Oh, some of my kith and kin spend their time
in wine shops to spend the money they stole
from the huts and houses of the middle-class.
To err is human. To forgive we have our constitution
with needless amendments and verdicts delivered
by the judges under threats of power-cut or future rewards.
They might have been convicted but they're not dismayed.
Time will make them rise and ride the crest of wave again.
Model leaders like them are not born often.
Their tales and tears make people's anger soften.
Long live this nation! Long live liers in politics! .
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -