Isn’t it a bit ironical for Kejriwal to advocate patience?

Delhi Diary/By A K B KrishnanArvind Kejriwal is back as chief minister and all is well with Delhi! If only politics, Indian politics especially, were as simple as that! The new chief minister himself will be the first to admit that things are in pretty bad shape in the national capital. In fact, that’s why he has become the chief minister in the first place, to set everything right. And he said much the same thing in his inaugural speech last Saturday. He told a nationwide television audience to be patient and not set deadlines of days, weeks and months for things to improve. He also prayed that he and his cabinet colleagues and legislators be given just enough strength and not more so that arrogance and ennui would not overtake them. So far so good. Not just Kejriwal but the entire population, bar a few perhaps, knows that the age-old woes of most Indians – “bijli, sadak, paani” or electricity, road and water - continue to be the main issues confronting the citizens of Delhi as well. Add to them women’s safety, filthy, ill-equipped and under-staffed government hospitals and schools and you are beginning to get the big picture. But that’s not all. The 21st century Delhi voter is young, perhaps too young for Delhi’s own liking, and her aspirations are boundless. In its election manifesto under the head “Economic Vision”, Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) says: “We will develop the Delhi Skill Mission that will enable the skilling of 1 lakh/year (100,000 per year) for the first two years, ramped up to 5 lakhs/year for the next 3 years of an AAP government.” In five years there will be 1.7mn skilled youth ready to take up jobs. Close to 200,000 youth are currently jobless in Delhi and hundreds land up here every day of the year from all parts of the country searching for livelihood. More than 50% of these numbers is skilled labour. And now the AAP is promising it will add another 1.7mn. The AAP has conveniently sidestepped the issue that it is not skill that is at the core of the problem but jobs. Skilling youth is one thing, providing them with gainful employment commensurate with that skill is another, a bit more arduous. The AAP has not finished with the employment carrot. It is going to add another 55,000 employees to the Delhi government which is already facing a pay-out of nearly 40% of the state’s budget towards government salaries. The AAP has no dearth of statisticians in its ranks and all of them must be aware of the gargantuan task. Yet to add to this burden further either means a death wish, which clearly the AAP does not have, or a mindset that takes popular upsurge in its favour for granted.  Take another AAP promise to the youth: “We will make Wi-Fi freely available all over Delhi.” Some commentators took the term “freely available” to mean “available for free,” but that definitely is not the case. Be that as it may, even the “freely available” status is not only impractical but also highly unviable and, therefore, unlikely. I confess to being technologically challenged, so whatever I say here is superficial but definitely not untenable. According to AAP legislator Adarsh Shastri, the man in charge of electronic gizmos within the party, the Wi-Fi programme, which will envisage establishing “hotspots” throughout the city-state, will cost an additional Rs2,500mn. For an otherwise overburdened treasury struggling with all those subsidies and freebies that Kejriwal has promised his voters, this is going to be a huge challenge. When asked where he would get the money from, Shastri would only say he has figured it out. Therefore we shall wait. The AAP manifesto lists a host of advantages in a Wi-Fi environment. “It will provide impetus to education, entrepreneurship, business, employment…” Points taken. Another advantage that the AAP sees in having a connected Delhi is the safety of women in the face of a series of rapes and molestations over the past couple of years. The plan is to have all mobile phones equipped with a special button which when pressed will alert the nearest police post immediately and the guardians of law will be with you before you have finished saying “Arvind Kejriwal”! Sounds good, doesn’t it? Only there are a few practical problems that the innovators will have to circumvent. First, no city has yet been fully and absolutely covered by Wi-Fi, leave alone a city-state of Delhi’s size. (The manifesto speaks of covering “public zones” without defining what these are). If there are “hotspots” for Wi-Fi, there are going to be “cold spots” too. And it is not as if every physical attack on women takes place in these so-called “public zones.” And if, after this network gets established, the intending rapist could identify its “cold spots” he could possibly lure his prey there one way or another. (The Uber driver who allegedly raped his fare a couple of months ago had taken her to “a secluded spot” as she had gone to sleep after she got into the cab). The flipside of having a special button on the cell phone (and for this the makers of these gadgets may have to be paid extra), is that it could be prone to misuse. Any woman can press the button and send the police on a wild goose chase. There will soon be fewer policemen to fight real criminals. Kejriwal may then blame the federal home ministry because Delhi police report not to the Delhi chief minister but to the federal government. How far this will wash with the public at large remains to be seen. Kejriwal’s other challenge will come from within his own party in the shape of vigilantes. The chief minister himself was one in an earlier avatar and so was his close associate Somnath Bharati who, as a minister in the first edition of the Kejriwal government, had taken to vigilantism. In his acceptance speech Kejriwal had asked the Delhi police to take action against anyone indulging in hooliganism wearing his party’s cap. But that is easier said than done. Government offices and hospitals could be prime targets of these vigilantes and push can most possibly come to shove. Solving Delhi’s energy crisis even after halving the electricity bills of those who keep them within certain limits, universal access to clean water, better waste management, giving legal status to illegal housing colonies and shantytowns, constantly keeping prices of essential commodities under check and eradicating corruption from the face of Delhi are some of the bigger promises that Kejriwal has given to his citizens. Rough estimates put the cost of these programmes at Rs700,000mn. Kejriwal admits these programmes will take time in implementing. But now that he has a historic mandate he says he will fulfil these promises in the next five years and wants the people of Delhi to be patient.But Delhi wanted all these promises to be fulfilled yesterday! Patience is a virtue that is in acute short supply in India lately and Kejriwal himself is a beneficiary of that situation.Otherwise there was little reason for Delhi to migrate en masse from Modi, whose party won 46% of the vote share and all seven seats in the parliamentary elections, to Kejriwal in a matter of eight months. Kejriwal is as intelligent as he is impatient. For him to now advocate patience is a bit ironical.

Lalu reveals a ‘family secret’As the Bihar political muddle continues to grab the headlines here, words of wisdom from Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad Yadav, the original Bihari son of the soil, add another perspective. In the wake of his party’s decimation at the hands of the BJP last year, Janata Dal (U) leader Nitish Kumar had “abdicated” the chief minister’s chair in favour of party colleague Jitan Ram Manjhi. But Manjhi turned “rebel” when Kumar wanted to come back as chief minister. Lalu is somewhat amused by the goings-on within the ruling party in the state. While waiting for his flight to Patna at Delhi airport the other day Lalu ran into his friend-turned-foe Ram Kirpal Yadav who had left the RJD to join the BJP. “What’s Nitishji now up to,” asked Yadav who is now a junior minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet. While Lalu apparently pleaded ignorance, he did not waste the opportunity to point out to his once-upon-a-time protégé the fickleness of politics, especially Bihar politics. “Now you know why I got Rabri (Devi, Lalu Prasad’s wife) to take over when I had to go jail,” he told Ram Kirpal. If you can’t keep it with you, at least keep it in the family!