Nandan Nilekani slams Kejriwal's OB Van graft politics

Nandan Nilekani, who is heading the unique identity card (UID) scheme Aadhar project, said today that he does not believe Arvind Kejriwal’s style of fighting against corruption is good for India. He especially slammed Kejriwal for focusing his campaign on grabbing TV talktime and eyeballs.

He said, “The notion (that) you can bring corruption by having bunch of OB vans, I think that’s not going to solve the problem.“There is a lack of appreciation of the long term institutional and systematic changes required to get to the desired goals, he added.

“I’m as much for fighting corruption as the next guy. But, I certainly don’t believe that by passing a law or putting more penalties on bureaucrats or creating more inspectors is going to solve the corruption problem. That’s absolutely the wrong prescription,” he said.

What was his prescription for solving the problem of corruption in the retail sector for the common man?

He said, “Passing a law, putting more inspectors, punitive action on bureaucrats is going to solve the problem. You may want some of that but I think we have done enough of that. You need to go to the trenches and fix the delivery system, so that the right people get the right thing at the right time with an element of choice.”

Nilekani’s criticism of the anti-corruption campaign comes soon after Kejriwal’s allegations against Law Minister Salman Khurshid, BJP president Nitin Gadkari and Congress party Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra.

Khurshid, who has been under attack from Kejriwal, in an interview today spoke about him saying that “an ant” cannot be a challenge to an elephant like Congress. He also said the activist is having a “pipe dream” of occupying the space of big political parties by trying to “destroy” them through allegations.