Case for Mr. Kejriwal

I resisted myself from writing this article but some how I couldn’t resist putting my points across.

To Mr. Kejriwal’s credit, he is the champion of Right to Information Act (RTI) and he along with Anna Hazare started a campaign against corruption and in some sense the whole country united behind the cause. When the political parties did not heed much he took the most democratic way possible and launched his own party called the Aam Admi Party (AAP). In the process he is accused of delineating Anna Hazare and other activists whose charisma he is accused of using for his benefits. On his launching the party, I think the choice was simple, either be on the sidelines and keep protesting and hope someday our elected leaders would listen or become the leader and show how its done. Most everybody was with him till then.

Now after Delhi elections where in which his party won majority of the seats but not enough to form a government and he formed a government with the external support from Congress (against whose corruption he rallied against). Here many people believe he betrayed, I take a different view.

If AAP hadn’t agreed to form a party then it would have been a hung government in Delhi and a set of re-elections. Considering the inflation and cost of re-election is it really justified to do the same? Now that he has become the CM I think the first priority would be the good transparent governance with no corruption, that’s where I believe we need to give him some time to see how it will work. Life looks lot different when you are in seat of power vs being an activist, the best example I can quote is of President Obama, if people remember he ran first time in 2008 on the notion of “closing Guantanamo prison within a year”, now its been  5 years and we are still struggling to find out how to go about it.

On the other hand I am not ready to give national reins to his hand, for one he and his cadre haven’t proved a thing about anything and Delhi is like their learning ground, will wait 5 or so years before I take that decision. Also, I am worried about his cronies like Prashant Bhushan and his take on Kashmir.

In closing, my take is lets not pit him and Mr. Modi against each other as that’s what the congress government wants and lets wait and watch to see what wonders he can do in Delhi. On a related note, back in 2011 Mr. Kejriwal along with others once shared the podium with Sri Sri and if Sri Sri has faith in him then I for sure am willing to wait and see.