Fighting Corruption, Arvind Kejriwal Style: Which Side Are You On?

To be or not to be - that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them
- William Shakespeare in Hamlet

In many ways, these immortal lines from Hamlet best capture the dilemma Arvind Kejriwal faced over the past 10 months. Should he continue to petition and fast before a government he saw as the most corrupt and insolent in independent India or should he take up the cudgels and drive them away from the public offices they apparently defile?

Today he finally decided to start a political party and perhaps ushered in what may yet become the biggest political upheaval in India’s history since the rise of the Jayaprakash Narayan-led “Sampoorn Kranti” (Total Revolution) movement in 1975. Kejriwal’s team echoed JP, using the same lines from the firebrand poetry of Ramdhari Singh ‘Dinkar’, daring the government saying "सिंहासन खाली करो कि जनता आती है [singhasan khali karo ke janata aati hai : Get down from the throne; the common people have come to claim it!]

The trademark “I am Anna” caps had a new slogan : I am Aam Aadmi (I am the common man.) The change in terminology is both crucial and interesting since it comes just a day after Anna Hazare announced he was lending support to Kejriwal's candidature as a politician despite previously being against Kejriwal's decision to join politics.

The name of the party is still secret for the fear that political rivals may register it. But off-the-record conversations with Kejriwal’s associates suggest its name will be Swaraj Party (Swaraj means Self Rule in Hindi). The idea as of now is to invite comments and suggestions on the draft vision document, which will eventually be re-released on 26th November, along with the name of the party.

In the meantime, Kejriwal's team will be spreading out to various parts of the country to stitch up alliances with local level activists and anti-corruption crusaders. Some of these activists were present today, and their numbers included everyone from former bureaucrats to labour leaders and chartered accountants to rickshawallahs. Clearly the next big task before Kejriwal is to canvas door-to-door and convince like-minded people to commit.

In a programme organised in a makeshift stand in central Delhi’s Constitution Club, just  a few hundred metres away from Sansad Bhavan, Kejriwal and his associates shared their vision documents with a crowd of around 3000 people. One after another, speakers from across the country made a conscious effort to answer many questions that have been hurled at the new team since it broke away from Hazare’s leadership.

The formation of a political party is a watershed development in the anti-corruption movement, which started in April last year with the demand of a Jan Lokpal (a national ombudsman) with sweeping powers. (Related coverage from our archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.) Successive fasts and protests in April and August last year met with huge success and widespread approval, albeit mostly from urban India. Anna Hazare led the movement but most considered Kejriwal to be the real driving force. In most part, it was the Congress-led UPA government at the centre which bore the brunt of the numerous corruption case unearthed since 2009.

After the initial dithering, Parliament even passed a resolution to legislate a Jan Lokpal, but the government realised that there were deep divisions in the ranks of the anti-corruption movement. As the interest of the common public waned, so did the government’s compulsion to listen to the protesters. The government's apathy led to two clear groups being formed among the protesters: one, led by Kejriwal, wanted to join electoral politics and quite literally teach government a lesson; the other, led by Anna Hazare, felt it was better to work as a moral pressure group outside the political arena. But Kejriwal and his close associates had reached a conclusion and, on 19thSeptember, they decided to take the political route, despite Anna’s stern opposition.

Promises to Keep

The documents circulated by Kejriwal’s party promise a participative governance of a scale never previously seen in India. They promise that if they are elected, the people will decide the prices of essential commodities like fuel. Kejriwal’s argument is that instead of reducing the subsidy on LPG—which came around to Rs 35,000 crore—the government should have foregone holding the Commonwealth Games, which cost around Rs 70,000 crore. So if the people want cheaper fuel, they can decide the trade-off. Similarly, the party promised stern measures to ensure corruption is nipped in the bud and that those who are corrupt are punished quickly.

Kejriwal announced that the party would legislate the Lokpal bill within ten days of assuming office. Other promises included the right to reject and the right to recall, both of which have evoked a fair degree of interest among the people.

But there are many who wondered whether the party has the organisational strength to win enough seats in any election, let alone to the national parliament. “A big part of India’s corruption is simply because of the demand-supply mismatch. There are just too many people and too few resources. All these high-sounding speeches are likely to count for nothing,” said a member of the India against Corruption who now sides with the Hazare camp and favours continuation of a non-political social movement. “Moreover, come Election Day, none of those who stand here will vote for them [Kejriwal and his party],” he lamented.

Women and Youth

Kumar Vishwas, a key member of the anti-corruption movement, directed his anger towards Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. “This time, when his party comes asking for votes, we should tell them that just like money, votes too don’t grow on trees!” he said, in an obvious reference to the PM’s address to the nation a few weeks ago.

Like Vishwas, most speakers were acutely aware that political pundits do not give them much of a chance to win any state or national elections. The common, perhaps well-reasoned, refrain has been that electoral politics involves  the use of huge sums of money and other last minute benefits to win over voters.

Almost as a counter, most speakers suggested that if the representatives of their party were chosen from among the people and on people’s recommendation then winning an election would not require luring the voters through dubious means like distributing liquor and money on the eve of the polls.

Kejriwal and fellow activist Gopal Rai sharpened the argument further by exhorting the women and the youth in the country to come forward and vote.

“Even after all the allurements, the existing political parties have not been able to get more than 50% of the total votes. The remaining 50% has been waiting for a political alternative. These people came out last year in Ram Lila Maidan and Jantar Mantar [the protest locations]. Our fight is to organise them,” Rai said.

Either You are With Us or Against Us

“This is the start of a Dharm Yudh and everyone has to take sides. Either you are with us or against us,” declared Kejriwal.

Clearly, for him and his associates, there can be no other way to oppose the existing establishment. And it is here that Kejriwal appears to betray his inability to lead any large group of people; difference of opinion is as important to democracy as the control of corruption and nepotism.

The trouble is that Kejriwal and his associates link every ill in the country to corruption, something that several fellow activists did not agree with and, as a result, parted ways with him. These include other Magsaysay award winners like Aruna Roy, Rajendra Singh and Sandeep Pandey. The last in this list is Anna Hazare, the man Kejriwal chose to lead the anti-corruption crusade given Hazare’s record of struggle against corruption at the state level and his clean lifestyle.

But among all the prominent activists who started this fight against corruption, Kejriwal has turned out to be the only one who has been reacting to the criticism from the general public and political masters. He seemed to have no desire to join politics to start with. However, when he realised that mere petitioning will not win him what he had set his mind to get, he decided to pick up the gauntlet thrown at him by the political parties especially the Congress. Evidently, he did not want to wait in queues any longer.

“We have very little time. This country is being sold. If I don’t act now, I will not be able to face the next generation, which may ask why did I not show enough gumption,” he said to the applauding crowd. “Now the government can start counting its days in power because I will not rest till I root them out of power.”

But that’s the problem, according to many. Like Anjali Bhardwaj, a long time fellow activist and associate of Kejriwal. “I think he has done more harm than good to the anti corruption movement,” she says. “By engaging the more progressive elements of the government, we could have got a decent enough Lokpal bill passed soon. Just like we did in Right To Information. Now, by entering electoral politics, he has made it a 20-year fight; that is to presume that the proposed party would come to power with absolute majority.”

Moreover, she feels disappointed that any difference of opinion is seen by the Kejriwal camp as siding with the corrupt political masters. “There are genuine concerns that over-centralisation of powers in one Lokpal will result in corruption in the institution of Lokpal itself,” she argues.

But Kejriwal does not believe in half measures and neither does he trust the future government to bring in amendments to strengthen the law in time.

Means Vs Ends

This deep mistrust of the political class and systems eventually created a rift between Hazare and Kejriwal and threatens to derail the movement even now. While Kejriwal decided to turn around from his earlier stand of not joining electoral politics, Hazare has dithered.

For Kejriwal, it is the ends that matter, not the means to achieve it. So, at his own level, he is not bound to the methods of protests or fasts.  Nor does he have the patience to wait for protests to yield result. He would rather take up the next tool available to him: political mobilisation. If that means losing some friends and volunteers, then so be it. As one Kejriwal associate said, “When you channelise the river, you do lose some water!”

That’s is why Kejriwal started by invoking Gandhi at the start of his struggle last year, and ended by invoking Bhagat Singh in his recent fast in July this year. Today, Kejriwal has a definite political aim: changing the way India governs itself. And he will not let any symbolism, theory, or inhibition hold him back. He sings these inspirational lines by Dhushyant Kumar, a poet who gave vent to the common man’s frustrations, to sum up his intentions (also as quoted by Aamir Khan in the ad for his TV series Satyamav Jayate):

सिर्फ हंगामा खड़ा करना मेरा मकसद नहीं
मेरी कोशिश है की ये सूरत बदलनी चाहिए
Sirf hungama khada  karna mera maqsad nahi;
Meri koshish hai ki yeh surat badalni chahiye
[I don’t intend to merely cause a commotion;
I am trying to change the scenario itself]

The thoughts and opinions shared here are of the author.