Arvind Kejriwal resigned from the post of chief minister on 14th February, 2014 after 49 days of governance in Delhi. Since then it is being said that a significant part of his supporter base has eroded away. I am not sure if “erosion” is a justified word to use but for sure the way he has resigned has created doubts in the mind of people & his genuine supporters. I can confirm the same based on my participation in AAP’s volunteer Varanasi calling campaign. It is an important issue and hence I thought of putting down my thoughts on this.
Regarding quitting, Arvind has explained his reasoning at least 100 times. But for the moment, let’s not be MODIyabind type of blind followers and let’s try to analyze this move critically but at the same time logically. Let’s assume that it was largely a political move. But It was nonetheless very important, if not smart, move (more on this in last section). While being a chief minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal (AK) could not have taken the AAP to national level before 2014 Lok Sabha elections. He would always have been entangled in Delhi in one or the other nuisance created by political rivals. While in government, he was getting engaged more and more in futile issues like attack on Rakhi Bidlan, Somnath Bharti issue, Binny Singh’s compromise etc. So quitting, although on the grounds of principles, was a gamble that was played in the hope that people will take it as a sacrifice and will appreciate it and in the meantime he will be totally free for Lok Sabha elections before re-elections are held in Delhi. Unfortunately, the move has backfired (to some extent) and it is ok as in a big movement/revolution like this for a goal as large as like “corruption free India”, one loses some battles and wins some. In the end, what decides the fate is your perseverance and the means you adopted to reach the goal.
However, based on my discussion with people in Varanasi Calling campaign, unfortunately it is not the resignation but the way AK/AAP made it has caused more damage. In my opinion, he should have first created the news that he is going to resign after 7 days and should have borrowed some time to do direct communication with the people of Delhi. As it happened very quickly and people didn’t get any time to listen or react, his political rivals took this as a great opportunity to fill the vacuum with Kejriwal’s negative publicity in terms of his credibility, administration, governance ability and all. I am calling it unfortunate because it probably could have been anticipated given that our media is highly compromised (please see the video below for confirmation & IT IS NOT FROM AAP) . Surprisingly, international media is more hopeful than India media on AAP/AK for strengthening Indian democracy based on principles. ( another link , and here is another very important one on communal riots in India; 🙂 Isn’t it funny that people living outside India seem to be more concerned about India 🙂 )
Now comes the most important question of this discussion. Is it right to expand at national level ? Isn’t AAP stretching too much by contesting at 440+ seats.
I believe AAP is doing absolutely the right and very important thing. In fact it was one of the smartest and most important thing to do after Delhi election. By expanding at national level, AAP has formed a basic structure at national level and has connected all the good people together. It has put them in a garland like beads. Just read about their candidates from the list of AAP’s candidates : Soni Sori (Bastar, Chhatisgarh), Anoop Nautiyal (Tehri Garhwal), Rajmohan Gandhi (grandson of Mahatma Gandhi), Shastri ( Grandson of Lal Bahadur Shastri), Tilya Devi ( Nobel Peace prize nominee, Bihar) , Gul Panag ( Chandigarh) , Javed Jaffrey (Lucknow), Meera Sanyal (Bombay), Medha Patekar (Bombay) …… list is long. In fact 70% of people are those who have done something for country or society without being selfish. AAP has brought all these good people together. You might call them as activist and media might paint them as anarchists (after taking money from rivals) but the fact remains that these people have been fighting in their life for the right of the others and not for themselves. Isn’t it good for any democracy that unselfish people are being promoted. May be none of these people will win in this election but imagine even if they are in opposition and united what a support for the honesty and transparency in administration will it be. When AAP was doing anything good in Delhi it was creating ripples in whole NCR region. Now wonder even if 15 good people win from AAP in whole country and do the good work, what kind of positive impact it will have nationwide. It was such a necessary move that for this even a big & unfortunate step like resignation from Delhi sounds logical to me.
In the end, Well actually anything can be taken from both positive and negative perspectives. The sad part with India is that we are not trained to form our own perspective at all. In fact, we are trained and brought up in a way where you don’t question your senior’s (parent & teachers) perspective. Currently, media has become a big senior in our lives. We all just come home tired and grab anything that is thrown at us by media. Just imagine if Anna comes in 2019 saying I have formed a party, please vote for it. All the rivals and media will start throwing the jibe that where were you all these years. Now, imagine talking to people outside Delhi to be ready to vote for AAP in 2019 as we will expand then. Everyone’s reaction would be like , yea it’s ok we will see it then. And for that matter those who find something to criticize in AAP now, would have found even in 2019 if AAP had just remained in Delhi till 2019. They were anyway criticizing AAP even in during those 49 days when AAP was writing the history of good governance.
The challenge for AAP is that we, the common men of India, are so busy in our lives that we hardly get the time to dig the truth. And with Rs. 30,000 crore being spent in this election, NaMo to kya Dawood Ibrahim ki bhi wave banayee ja sakti hai. I discussed this with one of my friend and asked him where you get the information about AAP from. He says, news channels, newspaper and all. When I asked him, do you follow AAP’s facebook page as it takes only 5 minutes per day to get to know what they are doing. He said no and in fact looked upon me suspiciously as if I was asking him to read an extremist literature or some Lal Kitaab :). That’s sad but true. On the other hand, we all know but want to ignore the fact that a significant portion of media is compromised from medium to worst levels. I am not saying that everything is compromised but to a large extent of 30,000 crore is going in buying media space only.
Holy Nar once said it aptly, “We who are interested in relative truth have to keep digging for it and not let ourselves be sucked under.“
Jai Hind.
PLEASE WATCH FOLLOWING LINKS (not from AAP) BEFORE YOU DIGEST THE FOOD GIVEN BY INDIAN MEDIA TO US ON DAILY BASIS.
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