"I was the first one who pushed the idea, One Nation, One Election." Spiritual leader Sadhguru spoke about the dangers that non-simultaneous elections pose to democracy at the Express Adda event. 🙏 Indian Express Indian Express Entertainment Anant Goenka
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00:00At an election time, we have to give a margin to all political leaders that they will say a few senseless things.
00:06Democracies will become so irrelevant if we go like this, that people will say we want a dictator.
00:17We're approaching the largest election in the world in about six months.
00:24Do you think these micro-identities get exploited, and I'm not pointing fingers at any political party,
00:30but I'm just saying as a trend, do you think it's just, you know, par for the course for a politician
00:35to just find these micro-identities and then kind of, you know, sort of poke those bears to kind of make people come and vote?
00:43Sadhguru 17, 18 years ago, I was the first one who pushed the idea, one nation, one election.
00:48I don't know if you've heard that, way back I've spoken.
00:52Because… because of the televisions and whatever else, it's particularly because of the audio-visual thing,
01:00election seems to be going on just about all the time.
01:04Election in Nagaland, it looks like there's a local election going on, all right?
01:11When your grandfather was there, even it doesn't matter how much he wrote, we wouldn't know there is an election in Nagaland, all right?
01:19But now it's not like that, there are much louder journalists who will scream it into our bedrooms and
01:26unfortunately there's television in every room, wherever you go, they're screaming at us that Nagaland election, Nagaland election.
01:35And now it becomes so important, Prime Minister himself is going there, Chief Ministers are going there, all leaders are going there.
01:41Now it's a big affair, all right? It is not a big affair for all of us, Nagaland election,
01:46it's important for Nagaland people, not for people who are living in Maharashtra or Karnataka or Tamil Nadu,
01:52but it becomes important because of the way, the decibel that's going on.
01:57See, at an election time, we have to give a margin to all political leaders that they will say a few senseless things.
02:06No, I'm saying… no, no, I'm not saying this is a complaint, I'm saying if you were standing for election, you would also do,
02:12because the whole thing is emotional movement, all right?
02:15People are not going to vote you for a sensible thing that you said.
02:19They're going to vote you, like I said, save soil, I have to create a drama, I'm going to die.
02:24Otherwise they won't move. How much ever sense you talk, they won't move.
02:29Don't think sense is a great value in the world, no. It is not. I have learned this in a hard way.
02:37Sense is not the greatest value, drama. Everybody needs drama.
02:43So, what do they do? To win a election, they have to do drama.
02:46So, when you're doing drama, dialogues will, you know, sometimes cross limits, sometimes says things which are not true.
02:56So, I said, once in five years, anyway parliamentary election are there, rest of the state elections,
03:03once in two-and-a-half years, midterm, because once in five years means those who have lost the election will become irrelevant.
03:10Their people, their on-the-street workers and others, they need to be fed on a daily basis, something should be there.
03:17So, all state elections, panchayat elections, municipal elections, everything after two-and-a-half years,
03:24so that every two-and-a-half years you have a chance to manifest yourself.
03:29Rest of the time don't talk, just do… show me what you're doing, because election should be three to four months talk.
03:37Rest of the time people should work. I'm saying in United States, election campaign started nineteen, twenty months ago, before the election.
03:49Where are we going? Four-year term, twenty months before election you start your election campaigning.
03:58There is no work left, only drama… dramatic talk going on.
04:03So, democracies will become so irrelevant if we go like this, that people will say,
04:09we want a dictator, we want a king. If you're campaigning five years of the year for something or the other,
04:15slowly it'll come to a place people are fed up with democracy, please get us one benevolent dictator for us.
04:22This is what will come to, that will be a huge loss for humanity, because never before in the history of humanity,
04:29change of power has happened without blood flowing on the street.
04:33Democracy is that instrument where power can switch without blood flowing on the street, that's not a small thing.
04:40When I say blood, please understand it could be yours or mine.