Photographs of individuals, released or concealed, is not the point. That there was somebody like Jeffrey Epstein should agitate societies across the world. This is not an exceptional phenomenon; every country has little or big Epsteins. This is not an episodic jolt; this is the culture of exploitation that sculpts power structures. That the ugly underbelly exists everywhere is not open to dispute.And the rich and powerful aren’t wholly responsible for this evil. America knew what it was doing when it elected Donald Trump. His reckless dalliances and perverse attitude towards women, manifested through what was dismissed as locker-room talk, were known to the people. That he was a close friend of Epstein for decades was also not a secret. The truth of Epstein, who built an illicit empire using over 1,000 girls, mostly minor, for satisfying the lust of powerful politicians, businessmen and celebrities, was also in public domain much before Trump contested the presidential election for the first time. America was probably not bothered; it had seen its Presidents mired in scandals; one of them – Bill Clinton – had become a horrid global spectacle for indecent exploitation of an intern, Monica Lewinsky. Little wonder, Clinton too emerged as the showpiece of Epstein files.While insiders know there are people in India who have risen in politics and business by supplying girls to leaders and bureaucrats, what’s in the public domain is no less disgraceful. We have rapists, murderers, smugglers, blackmailers and criminals as public representatives at all levels, from top to bottom, getting elected again and again, despite public knowledge of wrongdoing. Also read: As US DOJ Begins to Release Epstein Files, Remember the VictimsWe have seen a petty politician gutting his girlfriend in a tandoor. We have seen an MLA wiping out the entire family of a girl who accused him of rape. We have seen a naked governor being massaged in a Rajbhawan. We have seen legislators watching porn inside the assembly. We have heard audios of actresses talking about a former Union minister. We have heard tapes of conversation detailing a chief minister’s snooping of a girl. We have seen girls disappearing from an orphanage and their skeletons found in the premises owned by a minister. We have seen the grandson of a former prime minister rotting in jail for exploiting hundreds of women.What, unfortunately, we haven’t seen is the commitment to transparency and accountability that America has demonstrated. Epstein files were released because of bipartisan pressure on the president. Their House of Representatives voted 427-1 for the Transparency Act in the Epstein case. Can we imagine our parliament bypassing party lines to take a moral stand on any issue; be it a scandal or for larger public good? Politics of pawnsWhat if a Gullu Tewari was elected the prime minister instead of Narendra Modi after the 2014 parliamentary elections? Nonsensical question, you would scream, arguing that the mandate obviously wasn’t for any Gullu Tewari. After all, there has to be some sanctity of majority opinion in a democracy. There was no justification for hoisting a Tom, Dick or Harry on the nation not only in 2014 but a decade later, in 2024, either. That unfamiliar nonentity, Gullu Tewari, deserved to wander in the darkest corners of anonymity. But what happened in Rajasthan in 2023? Wasn’t a Gullu Tewari discovered, or invented, to violate the spirit of the people’s mandate? Is that a false analogy to elucidate the irrationality of Bhajan Lal Sharma getting picked as the chief minister instead of Vasundhara Raje, unquestionably the supreme leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Rajasthan? Wasn’t democracy smothered by that dictatorial fiat? Don’t judge the BJP’s leadership by an exception, some may argue. But what happened in Madhya Pradesh? Mohan Yadav obviously didn’t grab the top post, defeating Shivraj Chauhan, through a democratic contest. There are countless examples – Rekha Gupta in Delhi, Raghubar Das in Jharkhand, Manoharlal Khattar and Nayab Saini in Haryana, Biplab Deb in Tripura and Bhupendra Patel in Gujarat. Flashes of the same nondescript ‘Gullu-Tewari’ syndrome can be seen in the choice of Ram Nath Kovind and Draupadi Murmu as the President over veteran claimants like L.K. Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi. Jagdeep Dhankar and C.P. Radhakrishnan too fall in the same category. Is running roughshod over majority opinion, popularity and wider acceptability a new definition of democracy? What’s Nitin Nabin, the new working president of the BJP – a specimen of democratic wonder, or a product of democratic suppression? Forget about India, Nabin was not known as a leader of consequence even in Bihar, probably just above a municipal level greenhorn. The ceaseless tussle between Siddaramaiah and D.K. Shivakumar in Karnataka is a sign of thriving democratic struggle while the meek surrender by Vasundhara Raje or Shivraj Singh Chauhan signifies the suffocation of a despotic control. The twist given by the BJP, that even ordinary workers can occupy top posts unlike the dynastic order in the Congress, is fallacious. Democracy promotes healthy competition and values majority opinion. Who would agree that the BJP workers were secretly crying for a Bhajan Lal Sharma, or a Rekha Gupta and the Modi-Shah duo bowed to that hidden democratic pressure?Also read: ‘Vote Chori’ Rally: Widespread Doubt on Electoral System Fuels Calls for Mass MovementUnbridled power ensures Tughlaqi firmans work at that moment, but they don’t fetch democratic legitimacy. How the BJP wins elections in Modi-Shah hegemony has become a subject of unprecedented suspicion and controversy. The choice of pygmies will give birth to newer suspicions – are Modi-Shah not dependent on normal political contests for victory? What will happen to the BJP as and when normal politics is restored? Whose leadership will sustain the winning streak – Yadav, Sharma, Gupta or Saini? Only time will tell whether this golden period of BJP dominance has actually hollowed out its institutional strength. The Congress fell on evil days but survived. What will happen to the BJP when the tide turns?Assassin in the airWhen Delhi was struggling to breathe, a cheerful Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivered a nasty dialogue: “Mausam ka maza leejiye! Eyes burned for weeks but Modi’s dialogue left the ears burning. As if the poor getting 5kg ration free and the rich travelling in swanky cars weren’t good enough, Indians are now crying for clean air. But Modi obliged them, giving Prana to everybody. Yes ‘PRANA’ – Portal for Regulation of Air Pollution in Non-attainment cities. Such a beautiful and thoughtful acronym! And this gift was given in 2021 itself. But the air quality worsened. The AQI zoomed from 300 to 800, cocking a snook at the safe limit of 50. People feared stepping out; patients with lung disease felt choked. Then fell on them the embers of this ill-timed advice – Mausam ka maza leejiye! How can a government suddenly keep air pollution on top of their agenda when they tell the masses day and night that “ghuspaithiya” is their main concern and Ram temple their greatest pride? Does the media highlight this as a major public health issue? Do the TV anchors spend even 1% of the time and energy that they give to the toxic agenda of whipping up communal passions? India is the fifth most polluted country in the world and over 20 lakh people die every year because of air pollution. Around 43% of the global asthma fatalities are from India. But we are so deceitful that we hail politicians who throw dirt and paper pieces on the road and remove them with brooms for a good photoshoot.Delhi never witnessed non-stop, non-essential construction activity for a decade, what we have seen through Modi’s vanity project called Central Vista. China had a terrible air pollution issue but it salvaged the situation within a decade. It relocated thousands of industries away from cities, enforced strict anti-pollution norms, strengthened public transport by setting up the biggest metro rail network in the world and invested heavily into afforestation. While China spends thousands of crore annually on managing pollution, our budget for the purpose in 2024-25 was Rs 858 crore, of which only Rs 7.22 crore has been spent so far. While Delhi and Noida have spent less than 20% of their allocated budgets, 45% posts in state and central pollution control boards are vacant. Under this kind of apathy, the prime minister’s mausam-ka-maza-leejiye advice can be interpreted like this: Be happy with what you are getting, don’t cry for more.