An open letter to Arvind Kejriwal: Go ahead, be an anarchist

Dear Mr Kejriwal, As you get ready to take oath of office on Saturday, I am reminded of a philosophical line that the Wachowaski Brothers wrote for their Matrix Trilogy: “Hope, it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness.” [caption id=“attachment_2097671” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Man of Hope: Delhi’s CM-in-waiting Arvind Kejriwal. PTI[/caption] Hope: The word that has gone viral since you won the election; the over-riding emotion that we saw in the eyes of the voters who cheered and clapped for you on the streets of Delhi during the campaign; the source of your greatest victory and the source of your greatest fear. Let there be no delusion that you, Arvind Kejriwal, won this election. You didn’t; this, to use a cliché that has never before sounded so accurate, is the triumph of people. You have been elected because people saw you as an embodiment of their collective fears, problems, anger and the yearning for solutions. You won because in you people saw a reflection of all our intrinsic values: morality, honesty, humility and liberal, secular ethos. Delhi’s people are the party that has won; you, like a jhadoo, are just a symbol. Exactly a year ago, when you had quit, _Firstpost_ had written that AAP will return “because Kejriwal is still a symbol of hope for many people who are tired with the VIP neta, the corrupt babu and the dysfunctional system. And 49 days is too short a period for hope and dreams of a revolution to die.” Beware. You now have five years to fail. What do people expect from you? We know that you’ve made lots of promises and your impatient critics will soon remind you of free Wi-Fi, 15 lakh CCTV cameras, full state-hood for Delhi and Jan Lokpal. It would be good if you can deliver all these. But there are more pressing problems and concerns. Our biggest problem is corruption. Contrary to prevailing wisdom, the source is not the cop prowling on the road or the babu sitting on files in the hope of dakshina. The problem begins right at the top, with politicians and bureaucrats. The hawaldar and greedy clerk are just field agents of the real thugs. Most of the bureaucrats and babus want ‘good postings’—we have a lovely word for it: malaidaar—to make money on the sidelines. How do they get these postings? Obviously either through, to use a popular Indian phrase, jack or cheque. Once in a ‘kamau’ department (where people are ready to pay bribes for getting their work expedited), they set up their network of minions, junior officers and brokers to make as much as possible to recover the money they paid for the posting. To give you an example, people who go to the registrar office to get their land deals registered are routinely asked to pay a percentage of the legal fees as bribe. Where does this money go? From the broker to the babu, from the babu to the tehsildar, it travels all the way up to the head of department and his benefactor in the government. To make your fight against corruption, you’ve got to bust this network of crony corruption by striking at its very root, instead of going after just the lower bureaucracy and sarkari babudom. Quick-fix, populist decisions like ‘carrying out stings’ or running anti-corruption helpline will just not be the long-term solution since their success depends on citizen initiatives. The real solution will have to come from the government, not from the whistle-blower citizen. You are right in arguing for free water, even if your critics think you are distributing freebies. Water, like all natural resources, belongs to all of us; in equal measure. Its easy and affordable availability for sustaining life is implicit in the right to equality, the basic human right to live. But so is the easy and affordable access to education and healthcare. Why should the government completely abdicate its responsibility of running top-class schools? It is a travesty of our education system that we pay a ransom to get our children study in the best private schools so that they may later qualify for India’s top government-run institutions. I am willing to wager that critics of your ‘subsidies’ to the poor and underprivileged will turn into grateful supporters if you bring down their tuition bills by making education in government schools a better and cheaper alternative. And once you achieve this, we look forward to a similar model in the health sector. For the amount of money we pay as taxes, the government should give us something back with a proactive role in health and primary education instead of letting the private sector make a fortune out of our necessity. You have to shake up the complete system. People are ready for it. They have voted for a stable government that can enforce large-scale changes. Writing in The Times of India, social scientist Shiv Vishvanathan says: “The middle class realised that change needed disruption, a sense of community, a reworking of political style and categories. It saw Kejriwal as working for meaningful change, a change that affected budgets. They sensed that a few disruptions might be a small price to pay for such changes in budget, for access to schools. Middle class Delhi, like Trilokpuri and Krishna Nagar, felt Kejriwal was genuinely concerned about problems, that his agitation reflected his sense of urgency and concern. They constructed him not as disruptive but a constructive combination of a listener who was keen to learn about problems and a politician seeking fairness on behalf of them. Modi displayed no such concern.” So, don’t hesitate in disrupting the existing systems that thrives on inequality, corruption and purchasing power. Pull them down, rebuild. Nobody would listen to your rivals and carping critics if you are called an anarchist because of the compulsion to reload the matrix. Here’s wishing you and all of us five years of constant and constructive change. Sandipan Sharma