Rises and Falls of 'I'

Of late all the national dailies and news channels are abuzz about alleged corruption and demand for ouster of Mr. B. S. Yeddyurappa from Karnataka CM's post. With his resignation yesterday, the media spotlight will now move out of Mr. Yeddyurappa but it would be interesting to take a look at the series of events that finally led to this day. Trust me I wouldn't thrust the banal political stories on you unless I have something to highlight that all of us can relate to.
Mr. Yeddyurappa started his political career at the age of 33 as an elected member of a town municipality. At that time, BJP was a party unheard of in the south Indian states. More than three decades of his work has gone to make himself visible in BJP, make BJP visible in the state and finally to catapult BJP to the position of the ruling party in Karnataka for the first time in the history of South India and BJP. None of these are a small feat by any measure considering that at each step in his career he had to fight with other politicians who are equally (perhaps more) shrewd and ambitious. He also had to fight other established parties like Congress  and Janata (S) to gain support from both the rural and urban electorate. Though money is a very important ingredient to political success, grassroot popularity cannot be maintained with sheer power of money. Politics in India is a lot more complex and multihued for that. Mr. Yeddyurappa for the right reasons is considered the architect of BJP's rise to power in Karnataka. Unfortunately like his unparalleled success, his fall also is equally spectacular. But if one carefully looks at the events that preceded his departure, one can see a pattern. There was an open revolt against him after just one year of him assuming the power. The dissidents complained that he was operating in autocratic style, making all the decisions by himself without involving others particularly for those who belong to his dissident group. BJP worked out a compromise formula but after another year the problem erupted again when there was a cabinet reshuffle. Complaints were almost same except the people complaining, were different.
The pattern is unmistakable: He is popular at grassroot and that popularity gives him immense confidence so much so that he operates like benevolent despot; benevolent for his loyalists, despot for his opponents. For the party his popularity is an asset but his despotism is a liability. Corruption allegation provided for a tacit excuse for the party to take step.
Interestingly this pattern can be seen with almost every successful leader. Success leads to power, power leads to further strengthening of confidence which inflates the ego absolutely and ego brings unilateralism in thinking process finally leading to one's fall.
But can we avoid it? Can You avoid being trapped by your Ego? Here the answer becomes difficult since in effect we are asking the Ego to avoid being trapped by itself! Psychologists agree today that there is no I without Ego. It is this I that grows as we move from childhood to adolescence, adolescence to adulthood and so on. The I that begins Identification is the same I that also is the first letter for Imagination, Intention and Inhibition. In many ways the I that drives one to successes also creates its own trap for failure in its inhibitions. Human mind is quick to find easy patterns; the old patterns that led one to successes or wins [that one identifies with] also create beliefs and repeatable behavioural patterns that create blind-spots. We try to cling on to old winning habits with blind faith that they will create successes again. The blind faith creates a filter for everything that falls out of the known pattern, a huge wall against everything that does not conform to what the mind believes. It creates a set of  strong likes and dislikes and makes the decision making a belief-driven action and reaction. 
    Unfortunately all of these constitute the I, the I that is superlative, the I that is always primary, the I that is first-among-equals; contrary to what reality dictates, this I is oblivious to its relativistic existence. It is therefore as much realistic as much Illusionary.
       Reality, however, is fluid, continuous, ever-changing and pervades everything, within and beyond all patterns discernible to human senses. It cannot be reduced to a set of stable patterns that transcend time. The prism of I, therefore needs to be tested all the time against the white-spectrum of reality and adjusted so that I remain congruent to Reality. Since that is difficult for I, the breakdown of its successful patterns is the only way of reality to realign it. In that whole process of finding success patterns and breaking it and again finding next success, gradually mind's sampling universe widens, thereby bringing more nuances to experience-based knowledge, refining to what we know as one's 'wisdom'.