B.RAMAN
Shri Arvind Kejriwal of India Against Corruption
(IAC) has to be complimented for drawing the attention of the public to the
alleged wrong-doings of Shri Robert Vadra, the husband of Ms.Priyanka Gandhi
and the son-in-law of Mrs.Sonia Gandhi, the Congress President. By doing so, he
has shown that in the fight against corruption, there cannot and should not be
any sacred cow.
2. At the same time, all right-thinking people of
this country have to be concerned over some of his political tactics in order
to give himself size and shape as one of the future political leaders of India
determined to give the country a clean administration and corruption-free
governance.
3. It is clear he is a man with political ambitions
and a political agenda, who imagines himself as the Moses of India leading the people
of this country to their Promised Land. How intensely he pursues his political
ambitions and agenda would be evident from the fact that in pursuit of his
agenda, he decided to break even with
Anna Hazare, his mentor, but for whom many of us would not have heard of Shri
Kejriwal and his hangers-on. He used Anna as a ladder to climb to public
prominence and then kicked the ladder away.
4. Simultaneously with his campaign against
corruption in high places in which he enjoys considerable public support, he
has launched a campaign for contesting
the next elections to the Delhi Assembly. He has every right to do so and one
wishes him well in his efforts to seek political pastures.
5. At the same time, any well-informed person will
be worried over some of the tactics adopted by him and his hangers-on in Delhi
to seek public support. One would have expected them to draw up an alternative
programme of development and corruption-free administration and place it before
the people for approval.
6. Instead of doing so, he has embarked on a highly
dramatic and high profile agitation to instigate people not to pay their
electricity bills on the ground that the electricity charges are unfriendly to
the poor. He and his hangers-on have also been unilaterally restoring the power
connections of poor people cut off by the Administration for non-payment of
Bills.
7. His tactics disturbingly remind one of the
tactics adopted by the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) and other
Kashmiri separatists, at the instigation of the Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI), from 1989 onwards. These organisations instigated the Kashmiris not to
pay their electricity and water charges on the grounds that the rates were
exorbitant and that the Government in Srinagar, which allegedly did not
represent the people, had no authority to collect these charges. Millions of
rupees worth of utility charges remained unpaid and uncollected.
8. The separatist elements, whether in J&K or
in the North-East, and the Maoists in Central India will be carefully watching
the tactics adopted by Shri Kejriwal and his hangers-on. If tomorrow they do a
copy-cat of Shri Kejriwal and appeal to the people not to pay their charges,
what will happen to this country? There will be fiscal anarchy.
9.While supporting Shri Kejriwal’s campaign against
corruption, the public has to be cautious about his inflated political
aspirations and his tendency to see himself as ten-feet tall. An over-ambitious
political aspirant, however well-intentioned, can prove destabilising for the
country.
10. Shri Kejriwal is a Moses in a hurry. He should
be brought down to earth. ( 9-10-12)
(The writer
is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi,
and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate
of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com Twitter @SORBONNE75)
