Curiosity of Politics

Curiosity is gaining hold over the political sensibility of people because the normative basis of politics has become too thin and weak to shift the focus from curiosity to people’s basic concerns. Suggestive political expressions—“Wait and see, what is going to happen next,” “Who is next? and what next?” “X number of legislators are going to join y party,” “What is going on in some leader’s mind?” “A political leader has disappeared from the visible political surface,” “X number of MLAs are in our touch and the government is going to fall anytime”—which are frequently voiced in the past few years, point at curiosity. Thus, curiosity is all about the tension between the visible and invisible. Put differently, curiosity has its origins primarily in the condition of invisibility, in what is cooked underground or what is secretly worked out. Put differently, the condition of transparent or the visible political surface does not cause curiosity.

The condition of invisibility has at least two possibilities. First, it suggests the capacity of the party with resources to create fissures in the rival’s or opponent’s camp, either by engineering defections, horse-trading or putting investigating agencies, such as the Enforcement Directorate, against the rivals with the purpose to either pacify or pressurise and even to punish those who do not yield to pressure and pacification. Second, parties that control the ruling as well as punitive powers such as investigative agencies contribute to the creation of curiosity as to who is the next target. These target rating point (TRP) questions find their relevance in terms of dousing and decimating the rivals into submission or subversion. It is needless to mention that an element of curiosity in politics is further flared up by some of the television channels whose TRPs depend on curiosity.