Arvind Kejriwal is again the media talk of the town, albeit
for different reasons.
Now it is clear his intentions were always political and he
used Anna Hazare to launch his political career. Probably, the Indian
Administrative Services creature and the serpentine intellect of a revenue
officer of an elite cadre in him had these developments well planned.
So, like more than an astute politician, he had his name
known across the country. Though it includes share of controversy and negative
acts by Kejriwal and some of his teammates, he has been able to garner the
outreach he needed to launch his political career in a short time.
And how has he begun?
Like the ‘now abandoned’ Lokpal thing (and not fight) that
was practically impossible for its utopian contours, his political vision, too,
is utopian like making Budget a street thing. Like the tall but airy Lokpal
promises, these too, are good to the ears of the suppressed voices of the majority
who see nothing but endless exploitation to the hands of the political corruption.
Anything utopian needs a rock-solid faith to go to any
extent to make the desired change happen. The way Team Anna abandoned the Lokpal
thing tells that was never the intent. Indeed it was a well laid-out plan
executed well I should say. And planners would certainly have ‘envisioned’ some
sacrifices like Anna Hazare in the way. Ethically wrong, but politically
correct in the present context of the Indian politics.
In that sense, Arvind Kejriwal was already a politician of the
day well before he embarked on his real-time political journey.
And the success of the pre-launch activities (the Lokpal
thing), have emboldened him to emulate the same theatrics. So, he is on the
job, in the field, with his militant style of politics, a style that he used to
slam the political class during the Lokpal thing. The media pundits and the
politicians know it as ‘Halla Bol’.
Indeed, the corrupt political class of the day deserves much
worse than it. The utopian vision he is proposing, mixed with populist ‘Halla
Bol’ acts like asking people to stop paying the sky-high electricity bills, is
making the established political class squirm. The Delhi unit of the Bhartiya Janta
Party has swung into action from its immortal sleep lest Arvind Kejriwal become
the principal opposition in Delhi.
An insensitive Sheila Dikshit government is coward enough to
let Kejriwal be out in the open even if he trespasses the legal norms in his ‘Halla
Bol’ political launch mission, for arresting him would make a hero out of him.
Certainly, the politician in Arvind Kejriwal realizes it
well and he is going to exploit it fully. But trusting a Kejriwa-like for a
positive change in the Indian politics has to come always with a pinch of salt
given his shady past since April 2011 when the Lokpal thing began.
But in all this, with all the dirty linen of the politicians
that Kejriwal would wash in the public (Robert Varda might be just the
beginning), and how the established political class hits back on it, we are
going to have a nice theatre to watch and enjoy.
For, we cannot sympathize with Arvind Kejriwal for what he
has done with the Lokpal Cause.
But, we would certainly give him the benefit of doubt till
he continues unearthing facts unmasking the corrupt politicians, their relatives
and associates.
©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/
