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12 reasons to reject Kejriwal
Friday, 14 March 2014 | Arindam Chaudhuri | in Oped
In the few months that the Aam Aadmi Party chief has spent in electoral politics, he has dissappointed those who had hoped he would be an alternate political force in Delhi and also exposed himself as incapable of leading the nation
I voted for AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal during the Delhi Assembly election, but I had also mentioned then that for the general election, one must vote for Narendra Modi. At that point of time, I had believed that Mr Kejriwal was not (yet) mature enough to be considered for central leadership. Now, I am convinced he is not even mature enough for the next Delhi Assembly election. Here are a dozen reasons why you should not vote for Mr Kejriwal:
Reason #1: Anna Hazare says that “obsession to become Prime Minister has gone into Arvind Kejriwal’s head”. That’s exactly why we should not vote for Mr Kejriwal. Aiming to become the Prime Minister is nothing wrong. But the change agent, who the country is looking out for right now, should think of doing only the right things without compromising on issues; not an infatuated man who is visibly obsessed with becoming the Prime Minister. Mr Kejriwal could not even stay away from his greed to become the Chief Minister of Delhi and took acquisitive support from the same Congress, against which his entire election campaign had been mobilised. Similarly, and shockingly, he has voiced his intemperate support forkhap panchayat and is making all those venal compromises that every politician, who he speaks of against, makes.
Reason #2: We do not want a leader who does nothing himself, but spuriously doles away the precious and little savings of the previous Government in ridiculously thoughtless, populist and vote-bank oriented subsidies to the middle-class and rich, who can in any case afford to pay their bills, including those for water and electricity.
Reason #3: We do not want Gandhi-topi wearing vandal MLAs implementing a vigilante justice mechanism to replace our already poor policing system. Imagine a Prime Minister who grandiosely claims, “I am an anarchist, so let my MLAs and MPs do such acts too”. We want the dignity of the Gandhi cap to remain. In fact, every Congress member and BJP member must also wear the same cap and roam around until AAP members stop using it to spread group fear.
Reason #4: We do not want crony capitalism to be replaced by crony journalism, where people like Mr Manish Sisodia, Ms Shazia Ilmi, Mr Ashutosh, Mr Jarnail Singh and others are carefully selected and given tickets due to their connections in different media houses; and those like Mr Punya Prasun Bajpai, who have not yet been given tickets, kept for their benefit in media houses, to be colluded with and used slyly when required in order to manipulate the unsuspecting masses by playing up farcically planned comments in so-called live interviews, and by playing down questions that are of crucial importance to the nation.
Reason #5: Akin to the Mao Tse-tung’s Little Red Book, we do not want fatuously illogical books like Swaraj by Mr Kejriwal to be the book guiding our already challenged democracy. In the book, his heart might be at the right place, but his utterly uninitiated and intellectually handicapped suggestions, for example of making ‘mohalla committees’ decide everything across the country, are prescriptions for chaos, and would result in CPM-type local goondaism and anarchy all across the country.
Reason #6: We are tired of hearing one slogan-mongering answer to all questions: “We are doing this for the aam aadmi”. It seems the leaders of the AAP have negligible intellect, no vision and hide behind one answer to cover all their illiteracy. We need a leader who knows who is the trueaam aadmi, and really works for them, instead of using their sentiments to take the masses for a ride.
Reason #7: We are tired of hearing that everyone is corrupt and a thug; we already have a fair idea of who is corrupt. We need solutions and we need changes, not random, sweeping, unsubstantiated statements and unending blame games. We also do not want him making beguiling allegations against various leaders by touring their home States, picking up a handful of villagers and showing how miserable they are. What matters are development indexes and the changes in those indexes. Our leader has to talk about how he can make better changes in our current development indexes through concrete policies, not captious rhetoric and banal outbursts.
Reason #8: We do not want our Prime Minister or Chief Minister of the nation’s capital swearing on his children — like a husband does to his wife, when caught cheating on her — that too in public in a puerile manner, and soon after that going back on that very sworn statement.
Reason #9: We do not want an unscrupulous leader who doesn’t have any respect of law and breaks the law with knavish impunity, whether by exhorting people to not pay toll taxes or asking them to tear up their bills. I am still amazed about how there has been no action against him for the facetious drama he did on Delhi streets before the Republic Day. Would the Government have spared me for doing the same? Then why should be there different rules for him?
Reason #10: We do not want dubious mass surveys to be hawked as reasons for taking U-turns on anything and everything for convenience. It’s a cheap, laughable gimmick that whenever one wants to do something that people might question, I’ll peddle speciously fishy, closed-door results of a so-called mass survey to justify my actions.
Reason #11: We do not want the Government at the Centre to have the life of a poor quality local jhadoo, which is invariably less than two months.
Reason #12: And finally, we most certainly do not want our Prime Minister to sit on a dharna outside his own office or the Rashtrapati Bhavan, against his own Government, demanding the passing of certain Bills. We have seen this wacky joke playing out with Mr Kejriwal as Chief Minister. Still, one could take heart that mostly, only the nation was witness to it. Imagine the international community seeing such absurdly batty dramas unfolding at a national level. Spare us the opportunity.
(The writer is a management guru and honorary director of IIPM think tank)
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