What is politics? Why politics is a high priority?
You see that ever since the time of Plato, from the 5th century BC to the present times, we are all bound and live by what we call politics, a process of power that we, without knowing fully well, take our political binding as given. At any time, we are citizens of a government!
We are born into politics. Then, what is politics?
Many have answered that question. Even Plato himself had given his lessons. In Plato’s time itself the Athenian politics was seen with violence and corruption! So, Plato was disgusted and along with his friend and teacher, Socrates, Plato asked questions and sought answers.
Plato was not just a theoretician, he was a practical person, and he travelled and advised other kings (as in Syracuse) and also wrote Constitutions.
So, politics was essentially seen as power, political power that had an over-riding power over other forms of power, economic power, military power or religious and divine powers too.
Till now, this political power was seen as confined to the limits of some territorial geography.
Olden days we had had empires that went beyond national boundaries. For example, Roman Empire spread almost to the then known world. Also, such empires also denoted certain well-defined civilisational conduct of the people living within that boundary.
Roman empire was seen as the most extensive and also the most civilised empire.
So, arose from the Roman Empire all the modern world’s political institutions. Senate, the emperor, his paeretorian guards, the courts, the treasury, prisons, law and military and the civic amenities, roads, water channels, civil buildings, the city etc.
Now, politics means that the people become citizens and we see the first democracy in Athens, the concept of liberty. Pericles becomes the role model for later-day rulers.
Now, modern day politics is also about power and the exercise of power.
National territories define the limits of modern state power. The state has the coercive power over the lives of citizens.
How to ensure the citizens gets the fulfilment, the enjoyment of freedoms and security?
The point here is that every citizen now realises the state has power and also the state has duties.
Politics becomes a supreme form of the exercise of power and therefore we are at a point of time in history that politics and that too democratic politics too calls for new aspirations and new rules of governance.