August is a month of painful memories for 79-year-old Gandhian H Narasimhaiah. Pain arising from wasted sacrifices. In the third week of August of 1942, the police had picked him up from Sajjan Rao circle in Bangalore on the charge of mobilising students in response to the Quit India call of Mahatma Gandhi. He was jailed, at Bangalore and Yerawada, for about five months.Today, near the same Sajjan Rao circle, he presides over a host of prestigious educational institutions under the National Education Society. He remembers a childhood spent in poverty and his dropping out of college with only two months to go for his BSc (hons) final examinations to join the freedom struggle in 1942. And when the country broke its shackles, Narasimhaiah considered his job finished and didn't hanker after power.This August when the country is headed for another round of parliamentary elections, the pain has returned. Freedom, he believes, has worked only for the political class and for the masses nothing much haschanged.``This election is the worst,'' he says, sitting in his room, dedicated to him by college students.He has not missed voting in any election held after independence, except in the late 50s when he was in the US to do his Ph.D in Nuclear Physics. But the outcome for him has always been the same. ``Gandhi turned mud into gold. Today's politicians turn gold into mud,'' he remarks, insisting that the country is in the throes of a leadership crisis.In his opinion, the electoral system was reasonably good till Indira Gandhi's era as Prime Minister. ``Indira may have been honest, but corruption got institutionalised during her regime,'' he says.In the earlier days, he recalls, casteism or communalism was not so pronounced. Most of the candidates were elected unopposed because being people's representatives meant being social workers. And they lived up to that belief. ``Those were clean elections unlike those of today,'' he says.What about Sonia Gandhi taking over at the helm of the Congress andnow in the race for the Prime Minister's slot? ``As a woman I respect Sonia. Her being AICC president also I don't mind.But I feel, she ought not to have aspired for the Prime Ministership and entered the electoral fray.'' He explains his reservations: ``She does not have slightest of experience. She does not know our villages or culture and was never even a gram panchayat member. She cannot handle the multitude of problems that the country is facing.'' However, to him, Sonia's foreign origin is of no consequence.Narasimhaiah calls himself a nationalist and threatens to sue anyone who would call him a Congressman. Whom will he vote for in these elections? He is still undecided but says he will vote for a clean candidate.
