No doubt in a ‘democracy’ the charisma of a political party leader plays a vital role.Of course, Mahatma Gandhiji, Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi,MGR are all charismatic personalities.In those days,say during 1950’s, 1960’s,the leaders of political parties had developed their own ‘charisma’ by not making any conscious efforts but by dint of their own hardwork, talent,self-less service and above all without any political gimmicks or stunts or involving any lavish expenditure.
Of late,the leaders of political parties realising the importance of charisma, in democracy have embarked upon a "Cut-outs Culture" incurring a heavy expenditure, say lakhs of rupees, of course invested by the vested interests, expecting something in return.Perhaps the idea behind such’cut-outs’ are to attract or rather distract the attention of curious onlookers.The’cut-outs’ are invariably in digitalised printing or in oil painting and they even compete and pose a challenge to a newly released movie ! It is again highly disturbing to note that such ‘cut-outs’ simply meant to exhibit the flawless picture of their party leader with some political punches, like calling him ‘the Future Government’, ‘Future Tamil Nadu’, ‘Future Chief Minister’ and contains all the names of the persons and their pictures who contributed to the installation of the ‘cut-outs’, but not containing any political message or achievements of the party.The idea behind such ‘cut-outs’was to show their loyalty,just to please the person, to boost up his personality and above all to build up his charisma.But it should be noted here that the Communists parties or socialist parties operating in India, never resort to such practices and their banners will have the names of the persons, programmes, if any, venue of the meeting etc.
Another disturbing factor of the ‘cut-outs culture’ is the frequency of their installation,say for the birth day of their leader, when the leader comes for or goes for a meeting somewhere else, each and every time the cut-outs are installed by the vested interests.It is unfortunate to note that this ‘cut-outs culture’ even spread to private individuals,say even for a puberty function of a girl.It is needless to say that through this ‘cut-outs culture’ a huge amount of black money is spent and it is not accounted for.
The gravity of the situation involving ‘cut-outs culture’ can very well be understood, by the recent instruction given by the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister advicing his partymen to desist from installing glittering and lavish ‘cut-outs’. Above all Tamil Nadu government has recently been forced to issue some directions as to the installation of ‘cut-outs’ and a ‘cut-out’ installed should be removed after four days.From these directions of the government, we can understand very well about the mushrooming of ‘cut-outs’ and the proliferation of ‘cut-outs culture’ in Tamil Nadu.