The runaway chief minister

Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi’s Chief Minister of 49 days resigned a few hours ago. He blamed the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the supporters, Congress for his resignation. Earlier today he tried to table an anti corruption bill (Jan Lokpal bill), which the Lt. Governor of Delhi has ruled as unconstitutional saying the bill requires approval from the union government. In his defense Kejriwal had sighted previous bills passed without the approval of the union government by the earlier Congress government. The constitutionality of the bill is for the experts to decide. But what Kejriwal did today can be termed as an act of running away from his responsibilities.

I won't play anymore 

He conducted an SMS referendum before accepting the outside support from Congress. However, today there was no such referendum before his resignation. 30% people who voted for Kejriwal during the assembly elections last December have been betrayed. The promises Kejriwal’s Aam Admi Party (AAP) made were hardly fulfilled, apart from a big handout in form of state subsidy for water charges. The most important and long lasting promises like improving the education and health facilities were not even delivered.

What Kejriwal did deliver was a lot of theatrics. Mid night raids on African nationals in name of drugs and prostitution, sit in protests in the heart of the city, sleeping on the pavement overnight, filing high profile police complaints on sub judice matters and making some vague corruption claims. In his 49 days of Chief Ministership he never talked about a long term solution to any of the problems he highlighted during his protest days. His most talked about point, corruption hinged completely on introduction of the Jan Lokpal bill. From our experience we know that bills alone cannot bring corruption down, especially the one that affects the common man. The solution is to remove personnel interference in the processes and automate/digitize them. When there are will be no people involved in the process there won’t be any one asking for a bribe. But Kejriwal chose the high decibel, attention seeking tactics instead of doing actual work.

The reason given by Kejriwal for his resignation today will raise many questions in the coming days. The most obvious one will be, “why didn't he take the legal course to justify the constitutionality of the bill and push it through, even if it took more time”? This is an important question because he has now lost the chance the people of Delhi gave him. He did not use it to deliver his promise but blew it away in indulging in funny theatrics. Even if he returns to power in the next elections with an absolute majority, the constitutionality of the bill will still hold as it does today. Whom shall he blame then?

During the hay days of AAP, just before the elections last year, only 30% of the people in Delhi voted for AAP, this in other words 70% of Delhi rejected AAP. The interesting thing is that AAP got a lot of votes from the fence sitters, people who could not choose between the traditional parties BJP and Congress. It also got a lot of vote from the young voters, many of them first timers. This section is most vulnerable to defection since they see that their party of choice made a lot of noise but did little work in the past 49 days. Delhi is most likely to go to polls once again along with the Lok Sabha polls in April – May. It won’t come as a surprise if AAP actually sees a fall in its vote share.

The AAP promises

Results of Delhi’s assembly elections surprised many. Barely a year old, Aam Admi Party (Party of the common man) better known by its acronym AAP pulled a miracle. No other political movement in the history of India ever managed something like this. The party won 28 of the 70 seats, falling short of majority by just eight seats. The right wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) managed 32 and the ruling Congress was decimated to just eight. With no party in a position to form the government Delhi will go for fresh polls, most likely together with Lok Sabha elections in April/May 2014.

AAP started with the agenda of getting India rid of the chronic corruption in the establishment. Arvind Kejriwal, an ex Indian Revenue Services (IRS) officer quit his job and became an activist. He later joined the massive anti corruption movement lead by Anna Hazare, a social activist in 2011. The youth of India rallied behind the movement, which forced the union government lead by Congress to introduce a hastily put together Lokpal bill (ombudsman bill) in the parliament. The bill was never passed and meanwhile Anna Hazare and Kejriwal parted ways to pursue their own path to fight corruption. AAP was born out of the anti corruption movement. Kejriwal had a bunch of likeminded people and they saw the anger in the youth. Kejriwal found his vote bank in the youth, cutting across religion and class. He created his campaign around the youth and mobilized them through the media they understand the best. Facebook, Twitter, blogs, online newspapers, etc were extensively used to spread the message. Newspaper reports suggest that a voluntary propaganda center in Bangalore made phone calls to people in Delhi to spread the AAP message.

The high level team of AAP has many brilliant minds. Kejriwal himself is well versed with the government finances due to his experience in the IRS. Prashant Bhushan a veteran Supreme Court lawyer, Yogendra Yadav a fantastic psephologist, Kumar Vishwas a professor of Hindi and Manish Sisodia a social activist. This group represents the emerging India, educated, aware and ready to fight for their rights. In November 2013 AAP released its manifesto in Hindi (read it in English), which talked about decentralizing governance. The main agenda was to bring down inflation and eradicate corruption. Apart from this they also took up issues like water, electricity, women’s security, garbage disposal, etc. Indian Affairs gave the manifesto a good read. Sadly it is no different from that of the traditional parties. It reads more like a communist manifesto, handing out doles to the public to keep them happy.

The first paragraph of the manifesto says that “Ruling parties make untruthful and exaggerated claims and election manifestos are a collection of false promises”. It’s ironic that these lines appear in their own manifesto. The first promise is that of a Jan lokpal bill for Delhi. The lokpal or the ombudsman will be omnipotent and corrupt officials will be swiftly prosecuted, convicted and their property confiscated. It however fails to inform how such huge machinery will be manned and financed.

I will rule, you take the accountability

The next promise is that of introducing the “swaraj bill” (self rule), which will eventually delegate power to grassroots level of “mohalla sabhas” or block committees in the city. It means that the government will wash their hands of all accountability and hold the block committees responsible for all that will go wrong. The model will hardly solve any problems and on the contrary will lead to higher level of corruption and log jams in decision making.

AAP promises a mind boggling 50% reduction in electricity bills. The two methods suggested include audit of the distribution companies to find out the actual cost of distribution and the second is to install solar panels on individual roof tops. People will also have the option to sell excess production to the grid. The real cost will be known only after the audit is done, we cannot assume that the companies are cheating until such audit is complete.

Alternate source of energy is a welcome move. It will reduce the carbon emission and reduce the dependence on traditional sources of energy. But the problem with solar energy is that it needs a large area (around 100 – 110 square meters) for installation. Most homes in Delhi do not have individual roof tops and those who have are small in sizes. The cost of installation even after the existing subsidies is high. It costs anything between INR 120,000 – 180,000 for a 1 KW system. A typical home needs 4 – 5 KW system to run the basic appliances like fans, lights, television sets, etc, costing more than five lakhs.

 The manifesto then goes on promising better sewage systems, clean drinking water and 700 liters of free water per day, etc. Anyone who has lived in Delhi would know that sewage and potable water is grossly mismanaged. The entire network is old and needs urgent repairs. This will cost a fortune and would be financed by the MCD (or the state government).

Education system will be changed to provide quality education. To this end AAP wants to improve the infrastructure and increase the number of schools (more spending for public good). While the infrastructure need is addressed there is no mention of how the quality will be improved. The accountability of schools is once again passed on to “abhibhavak sabha” or the parents’ council.

AAP also promised to create a “citizens’ security force” to protect women. They do not explain how this will be formed, will it have legal sanctions or will it be a private militia? How will it interact with the state police and who will spell out their scope of work? And finally who will finance the force?

Rest of the manifesto is nothing but populist socialist propaganda. Protecting labour laws, protecting minorities, no privatization, no FDI, etc. Like all traditional parties AAP also includes religion and language as issues towards the end of its manifesto.

All the promises made by AAP may have good intentions but it will be extremely expensive to fulfill them. The very vote bank that supports it today will have to pay for all these in form of increased taxes. These taxes will have to come from increased VAT, sales tax and tax on fuel. Exactly the things people were protesting against.

The most dangerous thing however is the extreme decentralization of governance. The city block councils have been given so much power and responsibilities that it will be impossible for them to get anything done. On the other hand it will pave the way for corruption because huge amounts of money to be paid to contractors will depend on a certificate from these councils. While the government will take credit of whatever goes right, the blame will be shifted to the city councils for everything that goes wrong.

Kejriwal might have borrowed his movement from Beppe Grillo of Italy who’s “movement five star” is the blue print for AAP, but the way he wants to govern is impractical and deceiving.