As a corporate strategist, one of my biggest battles was to avoid the extremes of cynicism and idealism.
In every organization, you will find people who will put their hands up and say that nothing can be done. They will gladly recount all the problems and challenges but will not care to think about solutions. Moreover, they will work hard to dissuade anyone else who wishes to move forward. Often, they are charming and witty, with funny comments about the futility of doing anything. These guys are the most dangerous for any organisation, they suck all positive energy out of the system.
Not so dangerous, yet problematic for progress are the idealists. They are the dreamers who seek perfection everywhere. Every organisation has a few of them and they are surely needed. They set the bar high on what is needed to be achieved. Where these guys go wrong (sometimes) is their belief that things must change immediately and anything otherwise is worth nothing. Instead of using their dreams to set direction for the future, they mope about the present and find fault with everything / everyone. Or they come up with crazy solutions to shake everything up ("let's fire everybody" "let's sell that business").
Both the cynics and the idealists are elitists on their respective high-horses, disregarding the reality of the rest of the organization that wants to patiently move forward. The reality of every organization is between "nothing can be done" and "everything should be perfect". A good leader will be guided by the idealist's dreams and will weed out the cynicism.
As we look around in India, ahead of the national elections, I see a lot of people undecided about what to do. As I wrote earlier, exercising the NOTA (till such time as it counts as a "vote") is a cop-out towards one of these two elitist extremes.
Let us all have fiercely ambitious dreams of what we want India to be like but let not cynicism or idealism cause us to separate ourselves from the reality of today.