By Ahmad Ayaz

Power is a gift in any democracy, meant to be wielded with care. In Jammu & Kashmir, the gift has been reshaped. Political survival now hinges less on principle and more on showmanship and maneuvering.

The political stage, once reserved for conviction, has turned into an arena of calculation. What was once the art of persuasion through ideas has been reduced to a competition of emotional theatrics. Leaders today are not admired for courage or clarity but for their ability to flatter and bargain.

To beg for votes is to betray the essence of democracy. It transforms governance into a marketplace where loyalty is bought, promises are borrowed, and power is sought not as a moral duty but as personal refuge. Politics, which once demanded persuasion through intellect and integrity, now trades in emotional manipulation, where sympathy replaces substance and spectacle replaces sincerity.

This erosion of dignity did not happen overnight. It has grown silently, year after year, in the cracks between ambition and principle, until what remains of leadership is more spectacle than service.

Politics in Jammu & Kashmir has always been deeply emotional, built on identity, history, and grievance. These emotions are real and rooted in pain, but over time they have been transformed from instruments of awareness into tools of manipulation.

Leaders discovered that appealing to sentiment was easier than presenting solutions. Emotional connection, once genuine, became political strategy.

When a leader stands before a crowd not to inspire but to plead for sympathy, democracy begins to decay. Governance becomes a contest of desperation, not direction, a space where survival overshadows service.

A leader who rises by invoking pity must sustain power through the same means: populist gestures, self-victimization, and shallow theatrics. He cannot govern with confidence because he was not chosen with confidence. His legitimacy, born of emotion, remains fragile.

Politics, in its noblest form, is an act of service. When it becomes an act of survival, it loses its soul. A democracy built on desperation breeds dependency on pity, propaganda, and personalities, until both leaders and citizens forget what dignity once meant.

Dignity in politics is not about the position one holds but about how it is earned and exercised. It is rooted in independence of thought and firmness of conviction. Without these, authority becomes hollow, a mask of command without the substance of leadership.

In Jammu & Kashmir, a culture of........

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