A lot has been written about AAP, so much so that it has become a word by itself. Arvind Kejrival was definitely more respectable as a member of anti corruption movement. However, when AAP arrived on the scene with its political avatar, it was very difficult avoid skepticism inspite of conscious efforts to avoid being judgemental. I summarise the reasons :
- First of all, what could be the reason for other respectable members like Anna Hazare, Kiran Bedi and a few others from the original team not identifying themselves with this new political outfit ? Members like Anna Hazare, Kiran Bedi and Santosh Hegde had some strong individual credentials through their sustained and proven positive contribution to society well before the anti corruption movement started. The same cannot be said about Kejrival, his Magsaysay award notwithstanding. His academic background from IIT and subsequent service in government's revenue department were nothing to write home about. Possibly, he was too dominating or opinionated or even selfish which made others to stay away. Perhaps, there were "other" reasons which they may not disclose from ethical considerations.
- Initially, there were odd reports in the media about funds collected for anti corruption movement being diverted by Kejrival. While the news originated with a video clip of Anna himself talking about pilfering of funds, the news did not last too long possibly due to magnanimity of Anna Hazare not to pursue the matter. Caeser's wife must be above suspicion. But Kejrival did not seem to believe so and allowed his sacred halo to take a beating.
- While Anna's movement had a clear purpose, AAP's agenda was never clearly defined in public domain. Anti corruption theme can be a good launch-pad for a potential vote catching slogan but it ends there. Beyond votes and winning, a solid institutional mechanism is required to eradicate corruption. Governing a large and complex nation like India with deeply established bureaucratic systems requires some experience. Knee-jerk responses end up causing more harm than any good. While a strong legislation can help in addressing corruption, there is no quick fix. It will definitely require time and patience. For example, each individual will have an opinion on whether it should be a top down or bottom up process. It would be more professional to think of studying existing policies and practices of certified non-corrupt countries around the world like Sweden, Newzealand etc., to formulate our own version of a practical mechanism to handle the menace. It seems, Kejrival had no vision beyond his initial agenda of sanctioning subsidies and free power. He was a man in a hurry who perhaps believed in charting his own course. Obviously, "haste is waste" was not a line of wisdom for him.
- AAP indulged in manipulating and harnessing popular public opinion to gain favourable mandate. It worked well, until other political parties accumulated enough ammunition to call AAP's bluff. Public referendum was one such gimmick which made people believe that Kejrival would being democracy to their door steps. But the same AAP did not care to hold a referendum while deciding to resign as CM. Hopefully, Kejrival would have realised short cuts do not take one too far in public life.
- Another big flop show soon after Kerjrival took over as CM was the embarrassing interview he gave to a team of visiting journalists from Pak. The team had come with lots of positive expectation to meet someone who was gaining popularity by the day as "politician of the century". As per reports, Kejrival was glorified to the extent that Imran Khan, who has a longer innings in politics, came to be branded as Kejrival of Pakistan ! However, Kejrival's expressed plain ignorance about basic international issues related to the Indian sub-continent. That was enough to expose the real worth of someone who was being projected in the media as a potential PM of India. Hype and craze around Kejrival was already on the wane.
- By every passing day, it was clear that AAP was finding practical administration a tough task and their lack of experience was in full display. It was not easy for them to do tight rope walking to keep their minority government alive. It was also not practical to meet expectations of people, especially after the high moral ground they had taken by painting almost everybody else in the world as corrupt. That claim sounded hollow when they failed to check the credentials of all the new entrants to their own party. Afterall, everyone wanted to join the bandwagon when AAP was at the peak. One can easily imagine, exodus would be as quick too.
- AAP seemed to be looking for an escape route to get out of the governing mess they had got into. Their hurried exit without the "trademark" referendum earned Kejrival an unenviable code name of AK49. This is surely going to haunt him for rest of his life. He may have learnt the hard way by now, all the smartness in the world is not in the exclusive custody of IIT'ans.
- While even common logic could have suggested that AAP should have made an honest attempt to prove itself in Delhi, its scheme seemed to be different. Obviously, AAP was in a tearing hurry to hit the national scene in the parliamentary elections. How could a fledgling party of less than a year in existence back itself to arrange funds to fight over 400 seats all over India ? How could it even find candidates to match its proclaimed high moral standards in such short time ? Even though everything sounded so mysterious, it was highly sacrilegious to even whisper anything remotely non-complimentary about AAP. Such was their clout and nexus in the media.
- Prashant Bhushan, one of the AAP's founder members, has never been new to controversies. On a rare sunny day while on a visit to Kashmir, he got little too ambitious and tried to strategically pose himself as the future foreign minister of a potential AAP government of India. He dared to issue a statement favouring a solution through AAP's single most preferred route of referendum. This statement sounds so innocuous at first glance. But, when we stitch together all other theories around AAP, we might end up re-discovering the wisdom behind age old proverb "everything white is not necessarily milk".
- There seems to be slightly more than what meets the eye and much more than a simple statistical coincidence when we consider the fact that AAP has simply too many members running NGOs which are funded by multi-national agencies falling "somehow" into an inter-connected umbrella. The names of such individuals and AAP sympathisers are too well publicised. We can also see, many others who joined AAP without proper scrutiny and later ended up contesting elections included many well meaning, innocent individuals as well. Hopefully, such nobler souls will distance themselves from AAP soon, but not before burning a big hole in their pockets caused by election related expenses. Better late than never, as they say.
There are many scary and scandalous articles about AAP doing the rounds in the cyber world, which seem to be not entirely speculative. As and when the facts are substantiated, our countrymen can hope to know them authentically. Finally, h
ere is my summary : the original word aap in Hindi was truly representative of Indian culture – something very unique to our civilization. It signifies the divinity we readily see in another person. It is sad that such a sacred word should have ended up as an acronym for a political party which did not serve any purpose other than diluting the divinity of the word itself.
-ಬಾಪಿ
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