Targeting Families Of Bureaucrats Exposes Ugly Power Desperation In Politics.

Getting personal in politics is not something new; it's been going on for ages. The calculations for playing politics or even criminalising it always remained in the hands of master-class politicians. The power war games remained confined only to political realms, and only a small fraction of bureaucracy was weaponized to weaken the political rivals. However, today, the scenario is changed. The heavy dose of politicization of bureaucracy is affecting the rule-based relationship between Ministers and Bureaucrats and making it difficult for bureaucrats to give an independent opinion, which is giving a spillover effect that adversely affects the political class and the bureaucratic class. Unfortunately, the politicization of bureaucracy has gone far beyond its limits. The ugly power desperation of some political parties is now targeting bureaucrat families to pin them down and play "dirty politics" to weaken their political rivalries. In simple words, bringing their families into the conflict to weaken their morale and blackmail them and create a row of it. Top sources say that "perhaps this new strategy of some political party to change the spectrum of political-bureaucratic relationship. Two cases are worth discussing: 1) frivolous targeting of Ajit Doval's son, which led to a defamation case against media houses and politicians and, later on, an apology by a senior politician. 2) The recent case of Naresh Kumar. All these targeting cases have a few things in common- 1) miserable reporting of facts and 2) fractured analysis. 3) giving some bait to time-pass politicians to make themselves relevant and fire some political salvos towards their political rivals. The politicization of bureaucracy is a forever feature of Indian bureaucracy, and it has its own negatives, at least if practised professionally, which is still being done.  But the way it's been done by few political parties today by interfering in bureaucrats' personal lives exposes the ugly power desperation in power politics.