Politician? Kejriwal is really just a mediocre journalist

There was a time, not so long ago, when Arvind Kejriwal was a social activist, at the forefront of a movement that would rid India of the scourge of corruption. Along with master-faster Anna Hazare and Kiran Bedi, they promised the citizens a clean government, by forcing the political classes to pass a ‘strong’ Lokpal Bill. The country was transfixed as the UPA seemed to be forced into submission, and it looked, for a hypnotizing few hours in December 2011, that the movement would win. But as Venky Vembu wrote so eloquently at that time , ‘Our MPs gave us a kick.” So that was the end of that, and Team Anna, as the movement was called affectionately by all who supported them, went back to the drawing board. [caption id=“attachment_494794” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] PTI[/caption] What’s next? To Arvind Kejriwal, ‘next’ was a political party – a route that did not find favour with either Anna Hazare or Kiran Bedi. The movement split , and Kejriwal took the road most travelled. He began his new political career with a bang, launching a broadside Priyanka Gandhi’s husband, Robert Vadra’s dealings with real estate major DLF . The next salvo targeted Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid , with Kejriwal accusing the NGO run by the minister and his wife of financial misappropriation. News media lapped it up, and Kejriwal promised more. More targets, more revelations of corruption in high places. He upped the ante, dropping tantalizing hints of an expose of BJP president Nitin Gadkari, and making allegations of illegal land deals in collusion with the Maharashtra government. Unfortunately when the allegations did come, they fell rather flat, leaving both media and the public more than a little disappointed, and perhaps cheated. So what has he achieved – as a politician, which he now is? All he has achieved is to make allegations against a few individuals from the two leading parties in India and draw media attention to these individuals. He has attempted to project that both Congress and the BJP are joined at the hip when it comes to corruption. This is old hat. We knew that from Kejriwal from his earlier avatar – the activist avatar. He had already drawn attention to corruption by all political parties – so what is new? What is new is that he does not have the single-minded focus that Kejriwal the activist had – presenting the country with a strong anti-corruption law. As a politician, he has achieved little, other than to force the media to pay attention to some new allegations of corruption in a country where allegations of corruption are a dime a dozen. All that he’s doing is sniffing out stories of wrongdoing by the political classes and making sure that the citizens of the country hear and read about it – he’s doing the job of a journalist. And, going by the unprepared, incomplete and often unsubstantiated allegations that he has been making (insofar as the allegations need to be proven and, later, stand up in court), he isn’t even doing a very good job of it. So Kejriwal’s latest avatar? He’s no change making politician. He’s only a very poor journalist.