India has a odd situation with respect to politics and government. Most well educated people don't want to have anything to do with it. These fields are not considered 'good' or 'respectable' career options. The people who run the administration and drive the policy making are the ones who were the bottom of your high school or college class. No one who has the skills to be anything better considers politics to be a respectable enough life goal. While I was in India I thought this was normal and maybe even the right thing.

Why is this? In large part because we see the ugly side of our politics too often: the crudeness, the outright dishonesty, the corruption and the incompetence. "I don't want to be in there, fighting the pig in the mud".

Case in point: Growing up in Kerala I have heard this man  make too many inappropriate and distasteful comments on the state TV channels. He is the sort of textbook politician whose uncouth manner paints such a low picture of politics in my state that it deters most well to do people from having anything to do with him and his ilk.

Last week we had the terrorist situation in Mumbai that left everyone saddened and apprehensive of the future in the region. Mr Achuthanandan, who is currently the Chief Minister of the State of Kerala, shows up at the home of one of the commandos, Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan, who died fighting the terrorists. Why? To use a rather blunt metaphor, its a bit like a dog pissing on a pole to mark its territory - the obligated visited to show your solidarity and to establish your political presence.

The deceased Major's father decides that he does not want to entertain any such display in his house and he tells Mr Achuthanandan to leave. What would someone who truly felt for their loss do? What would someone who is touched by the situation in Mumbai and for those who lost their lives there do? And what does Achuthanandan do?

Major Unnikrishnan's father refuses to meet Kerala CM

Kerala CM insults slain Major's dad.