Time up for Kejriwal, the half way rebel

Few can forget Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption rallies against the UPA when thousands of people, men , women and teenagers and even chil-dren marched to Delhi’s Jantar Mantar and Ram Lila ground, hoping that their lives would change once the Lok Pal Bill to cleanse corrup-tion from public life were passed. Amidst the euphoria and enthusiasm if one face stood out beside Anna, it was that of Arvind Kejriwal.

Arvind, the young IITian turned political activist, was the new ‘Angry Young Man’ of India. He had kicked his secure and comfortable gov-ernment job and was out in the field to make Anna’s dream of corruption-free-India a reality. All that is history now. The yester years’ rebel is now heading Delhi establishment as chief minister with his own political party called Aam Admi Party (AAP) which celebrated its fifth birth-day at Delhi’s Ram Lila ground in late November.

Kejriwal, the rebel is dead. A caged and hassled Chief Minister, Kejriwal is now a run of the mill politician who does not know how to deal with Narendra Modi, who seems to have sworn to politically destroy Kejriwal. His forays into Punjab and Goa to transform himself as a na-tional figure turned a cropper. Scholars and activists who were middle class heroes like Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan walked out of AAP, raising questions about his style of functioning and Modi hobbled him into Delhi with the support of the Lieutenant Governor who does not allow the chief minister a free run.

Gone are the days when politics produced Mahatmas. Politics is now simply a power game wherein one fulfils his ambition by outwitting rivals at the hustings. Kejriwal could manage to win power but failed to fulfil his ambition. He lost the halo of a rebel once he was in power. Kejriwal is now another politician in the crowd, the rebel caught between two stools of an activist and a power player, losing his standing as both.

His downsizing in Indian politics also coincides with the decline of yet another anti-corruption movement, leaving little hope for a clean public life in the near future. Frankly, all anti- corruption movements have been driven more by politics than a genuine desire to end cor-ruption. Indian politics has so far witnessed three major anti-corruption movements that inspired the youth but each failed miserably in tackling the menace of corruption.

Indian politics witnessed the outburst of its first anti-corruption struggle in the early 1970s when Bihar youth took to streets against the Abdul Ghafoor led Congress government in the state. Almost simultaneously there was outrage against the Gujarat chief minister Chiman Bhai Patel, who was nick named Chiman Chor.

The Bihar and Gujarat movements soon morphed as an anti-Indira movement led by late freedom fighter Jai Prakash Narayan. It culminated into Indira imposing Emergency which proved her nemesis as she lost power in 1977 while rivals scored political victory over her. No one noticed in between how targeting Ghafoor and Chimanbhai on corruption was essentially meant to defeat Indira politically. Even Jai Prakash Narayan slept over the corruption issue once the target of dislodging Indira was fulfilled in 1977. So, the first anti-corruption campaign was more political than about cleansing the country of corruption.

The second major anti-corruption movement started with V P Singh who had stumbled out of the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1987 and wanted to avenge his humiliation. In came the ‘Bofors scandal’ pushing all anti-Rajiv Gandhi forces, smarting under the 1984 election de-feat, to come together under the V P Singh bandwagon. Rajiv was painted as a corrupt politician who had compromised on national security with purchase of Bofors guns from Sweden. While Rajiv Gandhi was pushed out of power in 1989, corruption soared in Indian public life.

Similarly, Anna movement to bring in a Lok Pal Bill to curb corruption had the political motive of merely discrediting the Manmohan Singh government so that it fails to win again in 2014. No one even remembers the Lok Pal now. All principal actors of the movement like Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi and Baba Ramdev are making hay while sun is shining over them.

Arvind Kejriwal, VP Singh and Morarji Bhai were the children of fake anti-corruption movements which had a hidden political agenda to dislodge the Congress government from power. Kejriwal managed to hog the limelight with Anna when the Lok Pal Bill movement was as its peak and thought it wise to graduate into politics marketing himself as the new ‘’Mr. Clean’’.

But once he was into the rough and tumble of hard politics, Kejriwal found himself struggling to survive politically. While he is fighting with his back to the wall, Modi has the advantage of the system at his beck and call while Kejriwal continues to be a halfway rebel. Systems never tolerate a rebel for too long. Kejriwal has to go sooner than later and the process will begin with a split in his own party as it hap-pened with V P Singh when his Janata Dal split only 11 months after he had assumed power.

Kejriwal appears likely to be yet another victim like V P Singh of a system engineered ant-corruption movement. His time and utility is now over for the establishment, which first props up a highly ambitious player and then gobbles him up, once the hidden agenda of fixing a politician is fulfilled.

Arvind Kejriwal is a tragic-comic figure of Indian politics whose time is over and whose party is rife for a split sooner or later.