Solve India's Corruption: Export Our Politicians

You must have heard of the Bihar and Japan joke, where Laloo asks for control of Japan for a day so he can turn Japan into Bihar. That joke set me thinking. India is suffering because of terrible politics. We have a lot of parties and a large number of venal politicians. Solving our political problems seems near impossible. But what we can do is globalize our problem by exporting our politics. That way, all countries across the world will suffer along with us, so we will not feel as bad. The solution I have thought of can be described as "weep and you weep alone, export your troubles and the whole world weeps with you".  Here is how my solution works.

Companies have been global for some time now. Historians have discovered pottery in Iraq (Sumer) that was made in Pakistan (Mohenjo-Daro). This means there were business organizations 4000 years ago which traded in pots across countries. Even educational institutions have gone global. I attended an education conference on "how to set up branch campuses across the world?" which had delegates from Western universities with campuses in Japan, Mauritius, Malaysia and Botswana. You can now study at Nottingham University's campus in Kuala Lumpur and obtain a degree that the University claims is exactly the same as obtaining a Nottingham degree in the UK. (Except in Kuala Lumpur the folk hero is called Robin Hoo and he wears a sarong because he could seriously damage his nether regions if he ran around in tights in KL's muggy weather).

Despite the globalization of most institutions - companies, universities, the papacy, Greenpeace, WWF - there has been no globalization of political parties yet. This is where my solution comes in. India has a surplus of political parties (1081 parties according to Wikipedia) and a surplus of venal politicians. Economists tell us that we should export our surplus. Here is how we can export our surplus and spread bad politics to the whole world so we can stop feeling bad about Indian politics.

I propose we start with our newest politician, Sachin Tendulkar. We can send him off to set up the Indian National Congress in Italy. He can put his experience in getting tax rebates from Governments for Ferrari cars to good use. He can stand for election from Torino, his election campaign built around making all Fiat cars tax exempt in developing countries, starting with India. He can also open a couple of restaurants when he is at it.

We can send Vijay Mallya to Greece to start an Independent party there. He can get elected by urging Greeks to rediscover the joys of living lavishly while being deeply in debt. His election campaign will centre on abolishing austerity measures, living lavishly and lobbying the EU to pay the fuel bills of all luxury yachts made in Greece. This will automatically revive the Greek shipping industry. How can anyone possibly compete with yachts whose fuel bills are paid for by someone else? In return, Mallya will give the EU a lot of calendars. These calendars are very nifty tools when you come to think of it. The EU guys can use these calendars to keep track of when the debt is due. And when they realize there is going to be no repayment, they can relieve their stress by using the same calendar.

Soniaji can go to Switzerland. She can set up the Indian National Congress, Switzerland. Her campaign pitch will be quite simple. Her slogan will be "I will double Swiss Bank deposits every year". How will she do that? Quite simple really. She will go to all Swiss bank account holders, who are mostly politicians anyway, and tell them the Telecom Minister in their countries has to be from the Congress; else she will reveal their account details to Julian Assange. Every one of them will agree. She will then ship a few Indian Raja's to each of these countries. The rest is standard operating procedure. And when it gets cold in Switzerland she will go down to Italy, meet her family and have a coffee with Sachin Tendulkar.

Apparently, Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard is struggling with a speaker and cabinet members who speak out of turn, are not loyal and do not understand economics. We have just the man who can solve her problems but we have to check with Madam first.