CLOSE LOOK It all began with a genuine passion followed by a promise of alternative politics of delivery with integrity, but ambition may have already turned it irrelevant. At this critical moment in India’s life, in spite of, apparently, his best intentions, Kejriwal may end up damaging national interests by playing into the hands of those who prefer India to be perpetually in the protest mode. It is time to worry.
The rise of Arvind Kejriwal is an extraordinary story of coincidence and craft. Given the national media concentration in Delhi (MCD) there is media fitness struggle to survive on hourly basis and the consequent drama invariably turns local and petty issues into national news, sometimes creating unprecedented opportunities.
After Baba Ramdev and Anna Hazare spotted the opportunity to use the MCD effect to attract attention of the country on issues of black money and corruption, Kejriwal harvested the real profit by playing out his social activism, politics and forty-nine days of administration under the cameras.
Given the national elections on the horizon, the wave of anti-corruption movement turned public integrity into a momentary hallmark of Delhi’s politics that catapulted the natural social activist turned reluctant politician into the hesitant Chief Minister of Delhi. Forty-nine days in government did wonders, less for Delhi’s people but more for Kejriwal’s ambitions. Leaving the city-State behind, Kejriwal and his Aam Admi Party (AAP) now want to clean India of one of its many ills: corruption.
Kejriwal’s passion for his chosen cause and the promise of alternative politics of public delivery with integrity cannot be faulted with, but his comprehension of India’s corruption, the strategy to deal with it, and the likely consequences may end up damaging India at this critical moment.
In spite of being one issue (anti-corruption) party, AAP has not addressed India’s corruption beyond Sab Chor hain, Sab Jail Jayenge (all are thieves; will go to jail). Beyond simplistic generalities, they have never tried to locate “corruption” in the context of India’s socio-economic realities. Worse still, AAP has chosen to remain silent on the international dimension of “corruption” in India that is absolutely critical in the 21st century when the buzzword is the global economic integration. Forget Swiss Bank accounts, here is a case of lesser proportions that Kejriwal initiated himself once and then forgot.
Kejriwal began his political career by bringing out stories of corruption involving some ‘important’ faces. One among them was Robert Vadra, the son in law of Sonia Gandhi, the President of Indian National Congress (INC). Kejriwal used the media to quickly make some name for him and moved on.
Soon after, a magazine called Le City Deluxe did a cover story on Vadra and declared him as The Millennium Man and the New-age Entrepreneur of India . Instead of trying to establish the allegations conclusively, Kejriwal preferred to pursue his national ambitions and, in the process, the “corruption” issue was trivialized. In the decades to come, when our children would study India’s economic resurgence in the 21st century, this cover story would help them make an opinion about the pioneers. Who sponsored this cover story?
Kejriwal repeatedly speaks about the petty corruption of low paid officers in traffic police, hospital, police station or some other rundown government offices and now shooting for Ambanis and Adanis. However, he has never spoken a word about the international nexus that is strangling India by controlling and manipulating her politics, policy making and determining her development choices by cultivating, cajoling, buying out and, when required, ruthlessly discrediting India’s politicians, bureaucracy and judiciary. Tomorrow it could be the turn of Lokayuktas. Does Kejriwal realize that almost all major corruption scandals have an international dimension, and have been brought to light because of the lonely battles that some concerned members of Indian bureaucracy and judiciary have fought?
Over the last decade, Indian story has been about the willful dispersal of political power leading to complete chaos, making the Prime Minister of India the national symbol of helplessness. In fact, a leadership crisis of the most unusual kind was forced upon the country; the corruption scandals were an outcome. A perennially agitated and protesting India suits the requirements of world powers than a focused India quietly addressing her fundamentals by making independent choices. Therefore, the 2014 election is not as much about “corruption” as the need to liberate India’s politics and addressing the leadership crisis to be able to determine our future in full freedom.
Kejriwal has also displayed an amazing lack of appreciation of the fact that “corruption” in India is not entirely what it is rhetorically being made out to be, a result of dwindling morals of Indian society, but mainly a consequence of a society driven to desperation by its ruling elites. If GoI’s Arjunsen Gupta Commission Report and the latest Food Security Bill are any reference, India has an underclass of over 800million people living in subhuman conditions by any standards, who are now cunningly being patronized and manipulated by making constitutional provisions on individual entitlements and rights that could take another six decades to get delivered, if at all. Does Kejriwal believe that the mindboggling contradictions of Indian society are merely a consequence of India’s loose morals and corruption to be fixed by some sloganeering here and Lokayuktas there?
India’s corruption is an aspect of six decades of development failure, at the bottom of which lies India’s political failure, the incapacity of India’s political leadership to steer India on the path of development by looking at her strengths and weaknesses and making independent choices. For India’s ruling elites the only choice was the opportunistic leap frogging by tagging along that has brought us to a situation when after sixty-seven years of independence our government wakes up to the reality of 800million Indian citizen requiring constitutional guarantee of food and education. Therefore, the 2014 election is about ensuring that development, and not just the constitutional guarantee of development, could become the mainstay of national discourse and corruption a negative by-product to be fixed with full force.
Not corruption, it is about making Indian democracy deliver with integrity
Kejriwal has proved to be a very shrewd social activist who wore his integrity on sleeves, turned it into a saleable product and created political space for him in a very short time. In an environment of hopelessness and widespread poverty, people of Delhi reposed their faith in Kejriwal to see him set an example in politics that delivered with integrity and without power pretensions. As the CM of Delhi he had the opportunity. Given the fractured mandate, everyone understood his constraints. In fact, he and his team had some good ideas that they could have pursued while in government and, in case of re-election, gone back to Delhi’s people asking for full mandate for five years to firmly establish an evidence of delivery with integrity and alternative politics in the national capital.
Instead, Kejriwal took some hurried file-based decisions, congratulated himself before the cameras, accused everyone of corruption, and then wriggled out of the responsibility by inventing a reason that was not. In fact, the curious case of Kejriwal attracts attention because of inherent contradiction of pursuing power by constantly rejecting it as something unworthy and also for wasting an opportunity to establish an example to restore peoples’ faith in the capacity of India’s democracy to deliver with integrity. However, Kejriwal preferred to let go off the one in hand for two in the bush.
Not loudness, India’s democratic choir needs qualitative improvement
Having tasted some success in Delhi, Kejriwal enacted a moralized retreat under the cameras to go national. However, it meant putting aside the foremost imperative behind the anti-corruption movements that had created Kejriwal and AAP, i.e. public delivery with integrity, for the sake of national ambitions. Like many others before, Kejriwal has also decided to manipulate ignorance to his advantage and willfully ignore the larger picture. Is this what India needs today?
Is Kejriwal really protesting about “corruption” that he challenges selectively and speaks about in self-serving manner displaying rather simplistic understanding of it? Are his utterances worth taking seriously when one of his declared faces of corruption is rehabilitated as The Millennium Man of India and he says nothing? Is he indulging in unsubstantiated allegations like other run of the mill politicians just to have some seats in the Parliament to protest from inside? Or, is he jumping around like a puppet as part of some larger design to deny India the most needed stable politics?
Irrespective of Kejriwal’s motives, one thing is clear that he does not realize the seriousness of the challenges that India faces today and her needs at this point of time. Having wriggled out of the governance responsibility himself, he now wants to discredit anyone who is willing to take on the responsibility and steer India on the path of development. Kejriwal’s self-obsession is making him play into the hands of those who want to keep India perpetually in the protest mode and who are least bothered about delivery with integrity that India needs.
The largest and the most impoverished democracy of the world have many innocent people without hope who may still fall for Kejriwal’s rhetoric of Sab Chor Hain, Sab Jail Jayenge, but those who understand India’s complexities have serious doubts. More than the everyday national drama to clean India that Kejriwal indulges in, the real act of cleaning some bits of the national capital when he was in power, no matter how small, would have been more convincing. India does not need yet another politician protesting and discrediting everyone and everything to get some bits of power, but one who is able to find a way to deliver with integrity in this environment of hopelessness.
Kejriwal as the Chief Minister of the national capital could have been a greater asset for the country than Kejriwal as the self-appointed Chief National Protester, even if he has few elected members in the Indian Parliament. The natural activist has brought upon himself the risk of political irrelevance for no good reason.
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