Kejriwal hits the bull’s eye
"This is not my victory. It is a victory of people of New Delhi constituency and victory of democracy," said Kejriwal after defeating Sheela Dikshit.
Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP debut made a massive victory across delhi and an everlasting impression in people’s mind. Arvind Kejriwal has defeated three-time chief minister Sheila Dikshit in her constituency of New Delhi by some 22,000 votes. His one-year-old Aam Aadmi Party made a spectacular electoral debut winning 28 of Delhi's 70 seats, just four behind the BJP, which is on top.
Once Robert Vadra uttered, “mango people in a banana republic".
Rajdeep Sardesai an eminent Journo is his blog stated , “TN Seshan wasn't the first middle class 'crusader' to make an unsuccessful bid to enter politics and he won't be the last. The latest to throw his hat (or should we say Gandhi topi) in the ring is Jan Lokpal torchbearer Arvind Kejriwal. Both Seshan and Kejriwal were professional civil servants before they captured public imagination through their anti-corruption campaigns. Seshan became a symbol of growing public anger against money and muscle power in elections; Kejriwal tapped into a similar outrage against vaulting corruption by those in high offices. Will Kejriwal succeed where many others before him have failed?
If success and failure is judged by electoral performance, then few will hold out any hope for the former IRS officer and his motley crew. The party system in the country has proved remarkably resilient, ceding very little space to new entrants. The disproportionate influence of money power in elections is an enduring phenomenon. If anything, the scale has only gone up: there are instances in the recent Mumbai municipal elections where candidates spent several crores to be elected as councillors. The amounts only go up as the stakes get higher.”
But not everyone who is a hardworking man can become a household name. He has worked his way into the political consciousness in such a way that Indians - political leaders or the common man- can either admire or ridicule him but not be indifferent to him.
After around five years of government service, Kejriwal resigned from the position of Additional Commissioner of Income Tax in Delhi to devote his time fully to fighting corruption in India.
Kejriwal, who came into the limelight as one of the main spokesmen and a close lieutenant of anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare during his highly publicised movement in 2011, later parted ways with his mentor to start a political outfit — much against Hazare’s wishes who wanted to keep his movement non-political — in November last year.
Dismissed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress as political upstarts who would not be able to match their popularity or influence, the unheralded AAP was able to catch popular imagination by offering transparency in governance and people-friendly policies to the city residents hit hard by price rise, corruption and insensitive bureaucracy.
Eager to sound neutral before he plunged into politics, Kejriwal spared no one. He leveled charges against Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra and then Law Minister Salman Khurshid of illegal land deals and fund embezzlement.
He also targeted then Bharatiya Janata Party chief Nitin Gadkari, accusing him of grabbing farmers’ land and corruption in collusion with the Nationalist Congress Party’s tainted Ajit Pawar.
His ideas and promises appeared to have convinced people to give the rank outsiders a chance over established parties.
Mr Kejriwal and his party have been criticized for their economic policies and promises of reversing hikes in water and electricity prices.
Arvind Kejriwal’s storm of lethal revelations against the alleged corrupt political parties, Congress and BJP, has upset the tricky equations between the government and industry and their nexus that has been regularly facilitated by the incumbent parties.
Kejriwal’s tricky and difficult corruption questions are bringing out names that were beyond our wildest imagination, beyond suspicion, and names that were once sacrosanct. For example, Manmohan Singh – who was always given a clean chit even by his ardent critics – has been accused by Kejriwal of being overtly sympathetic and soft on Mukesh Ambani.
Kejriwal has become a symbol of focused and cool-headed bravery, speaking each time with compelling logic and supporting evidence, and that’s where he scores. And he is using the media very intelligently indeed. Today, even getting rid of him has become a very difficult option – as then, Kejriwal’s dream of Tahrir Square in India might really come true.
One secret of Kejriwal’s success may be the stark contrast between his public and private demeanor. A firebrand before a crowd or a camera, he’s mild-mannered and introverted in person, a combination that inspires passion in audiences and confidence and respect from his close colleagues and allies. Short and compactly-built, with neatly-parted black hair and a trimmed moustache, he still looks a little boyish at 43. He has no personal story of extraordinary suffering at the hands of corruption. What led him to quit his job as a senior bureaucrat and become an activist wasn’t anger or bitterness; it was the loss of his own faith in government after a decade in its service.
Unlike Congress and BJP, Arvind does not have a huge cadre or force or grass root level workers to penetrate every nook and corner of the country and influence the voters. Therefore, with limited, he has to depend on TV and print penetration; and this limits his impact in the country.
Kejriwal travelled to villages across north India to mobilise support for an RTI law. Drawing on his own experiences, he told people that government officials deliberately engineered delays to force the payment of bribes, and argued that a strong RTI law would expose corrupt practices.
In 2004, Kejriwal launched an experimental project in one East Delhi neighbourhood, Nand Nagri, to test ways to hold government officials accountable. Kejriwal formed a committee consisting of 10 local residents who were trained to scrutinize the activities of the member of the legislative assembly (MLA) from their constituency. The committee then demanded public consultations over everything from road paving to drainage repair.
Kejriwal had been given the Ramon Magsaysay Award, widely described as Asia’s Nobel Prize, for Eminent Leadership—“activating India’s right-to-information movement at the grassroots” and “empowering New Delhi’s poorest citizens to fight corruption by holding government answerable to the people.
AAP succeeded in the polls it offered not only a new leader but a whole new class of politicians to govern the nation. That is the kind of change people want. So could the AAP emerge as the proverbial dark horse?
The real merit lies in the agenda-setting role his party plays in future elections. By stoking the public’s interest on the right issues and providing a contrast to the existing political establishment, Kejriwal could yet prove to be hugely influential in Indian politics.
However, the biggest challenge is still ahead of Kejriwal.
However, the biggest challenge is still ahead of Kejriwal.
Siddhartha Shankar Mishra,
Sambalpur,Odisha
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