Partner : What Is Your Politics?

An open letter to Mr. Arvind Kejriwal

Congratulations to you Mr. Arvind Kejriwal for becoming Chief Minister of Delhi. Before coming into power you were talking about 15 days to show people what changes you can make to this politics and to this state. I, as a citizen gave you that particular time which you asked ‘Me’ as a citizen to give you. You are the most ‘talked about’ political party this Indian country has ever witnessed, the party who talks about ‘public interest’ and not just that but the party who has the arrogance of understanding and solving the so called problems of public. People have been talking about you constantly but I kept silent to see what changes you are making, and you actually made changes that I could see and I am seeing it even now.

A clear win or being successful is never a certificate of being right as well, it can never be. One thing which is more important to look at is that your Aam Aadmi Party came into existence by making promises of alternative politics but after observing your Incumbency closely, it seems that it was all illusionary and you have cheated people very cleverly.

Your claims of making decisions ‘in favor of’ people are more to impress and less to help. You are the most talked about personality who is making decision too fast; you are undoubtedly setting a mark in front of people but in which way?? Are you really concerned about the Aam Aadmi? If that is the case you should have thought a little before locking your decisions Mr. Kejriwal!

Yes, this is true that it takes a ‘moment’ to make a decision and that one ’moment’ defines the politics of the decision maker but this can never be negligible that the process of decision making comes after a lot of practice and not with magical experiment. Apart from this, it is also very important to consider that your decision is related to whom?  ‘Who’ exactly are those who are connected with your decisions?, which is that society that is entangled with these decisions? What face that society has? And last but not the least, decision on whose behalf?

Your ‘Aam Aadmi Party’ is taking decisions on behalf of the ‘Janta’ but this ‘Janta’ comes from an abstract and ends on an abstract. Your party is certainly not aware of the real and diversified face of this ‘Janta’.  Just addressing a bunch of people by calling them ‘Janta’ will not give that ‘Janta’ one and uniform face.

This is significant to notice that just after coming into power your party simply started playing the cards. Just in one week you made two important decisions. First, allotting 669 liter ‘free’ drinking water per day and second, subsidizing the electricity with some ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ (which is being pointed out by many analysts). These were the two major cards you played to set your game for the long play. Before elections you promised to address concerns like drinking water for all and developing long-term water sources as Delhi imports 80% of its water from other states, tackling tanker Mafia, metering all connections, reducing distribution losses for long-term sustainable water availability and supply. Instead, you have taken the easy way to gain political advantage by designing a tariff formula which will only benefit already settled middle class. (However in the long run, the common man would be in rude shock as well). Both these measures were planned effort to give that diversified society one common face.

And that is how you blunted rationality of a larger part of the society. You generated a huge crowd that starts and ends their statements by saying, ‘we don’t care about anything else but we are aware that this party or leader is saving my ‘x’ amount of money every month.’  That crowd which is simply unaware of those things that falls in the category of ‘anything else’. They are also unaware of those things which relates to everyone in the nation called ‘India’ and its future in terms of education, administration and other policies.

A vision less governance and judiciary has evanescent effects and they don’t lasts for too long. These small transient satisfactions create space for major dissatisfaction. Now you are doing nothing but creating space for that dissatisfaction by giving them the power to operate ‘sting’. ‘Every individual can do a ‘sting’ and every individual can raise his/her voice against corruption’ this is what you calling it, but sting is far more dangerous than what you think it is! You handling over every one a ’knife’ and a ‘loaded gun’ on the name of ‘self-defence’ (anti-corruption)and you are ignoring the fact that these self-defence weapons can be used to take the life. I am afraid this will do nothing but will spread chaos in the society. This idea of yours of raising voice against corruption and taking laws in hands is not at all justified. While introducing your ‘helpline number’ you made it clear that ‘this is an anti corruption helpline number and not a complaint number.’ First of all having a helpline number itself isn't an all together something new for this society but that newness depends on how it works. This would have been far better if you would have called it ‘an anti corruption complaint number’ where the process of dealing with corruption would have been different from asking a ‘faceless common man’ to operate a ‘sting’ to prevent himself from the ‘corruption’.

You are not a ‘Nayak’ of some Hindi film Mr. Kejriwal which will end up after 3 hours. Even if you are a person with good intentions; the kind of decisions you are making and telling others to make as well will have its effects even when you will not be there to clean the mess. You talk about the alternative politics but doing everything that a popular politics does. You are trying to impress the youth by talking about the reservation in a university called ‘central university’. I am hard core Delhi-ite but I don’t see any reason of this reservation in central university just because it is funded by Delhi government!!

By doing this popular tactic you will surely get regional sympathy or support but ultimately you would depriving the deserving students of different parts of country, who come to Delhi University with equal opportunities. Are you aware of the consequences of this mind blowing decision of yours? This will ruin the field of academics and undoubtedly will create a situation of chaos at policy level. This will ruin the field of academics and undoubtedly will generate huge dissatisfaction. This concern for people is more fictional than the real.

You can say or blame that I am expecting too much from you in a very short period and I am being very strict with you, (your 'supporters' i.e. 'spokespersons' may call me puppet of Congress) but Mr. Kejriwal, you were the one who claimed to have the solution of every single problem and declared yourself as the single stake holder of honesty in rather rhetorical manner. I am doing nothing but evaluating you on your own standards and parameters. When I see you are not doing justice with your own claims and acting in a popular manner under the mask and rhetoric of alternative politics - I find you even more dangerous than congress and BJP.

Now do not say that in the middle of this jiggery-pokery of politics if you doing little bit then what’s wrong in that! Remember - One wrong does not make other wrong right.