Kejriwal Needs To Prove He's More Than A Mamata Bannerjee

Arvind Kejriwal and his wife together have 1.71 crores worth of assets as he has declared. Mamata Bannerjee has declared assets worth Rs. 15 lakhs. By that barometer (as Kejriwal has often said), Mamata is more honest than him. Of course Kejriwal is an IIT graduate so he is more likely to be richer than an honest politician. Quibbling aside, they both are honest people. Kejriwal has shaken up Delhi and defeated a Congress heroine (of sorts. Dixit was being looked upon as Rahul’s Manmohan Singh) after 15 years of misrule. Mamata defeated communists after three decades of misrule. Both did so by the use of people power. Both of them are street fighters  who can organize and carry out protests well. Whatever Kejriwal has done, Mamata has also done except on a bigger scale. West Bengal is much larger and more complex than Delhi. There are a lot of parallels between these two.

What we see in WB is that Didi is finding out, painfully I might add, that rabble rousing and opposing are far easier than governing. Her rule is a saga of missed opportunities and bad decisions. Saying no and opposing require fortitude but do not require solving complex problems, job creation, economy management etc. while maintaining peace and harmony in a complex society. It is being a CEO with no control over your employees while being answerable to them. Let us go back a few decades. Look at what happened at partition. Gandhi was the original Hazare times a million. Throughout the freedom fight, he was effective as a naysayer and a protester . He also led a large group of Indians who believed him. However, when we really did get freedom and time came for governing and leading the nation rather than protesting, his mettle was tested. The conservative nationalists like me think that he failed in his new role.

Now Kejriwal has promised clean governance. While not ideal, Narendra Modi has run a very clean government ( I am sure that corruption exists at lower levels in Gujarat but not at higher levels otherwise the Modi baiters would have found something by now) so it is doable. But beyond this I have my doubts with Kejriwal. Instead of providing real achievable solutions, he has promised freebies and Jan Lokapal and RTI. He is a smart guy and the voters seem to think so as well. I think that he SHOULD form the next government in Delhi. Let us give him the benefit of the doubt and for the moment accept that he can achieve what he has promised without breaking the bank. The BJP should sit out in the opposition (they really do not gain anything by forming a minority government dependent on the whimsy of non BJP people) and let AAP form the government with the help of Congress.

The voters of Delhi and other parts of the country who have taken a fancy to Kejriwal and the AAP need to see him govern rather than promise. Kejriwal needs to back his claims and show us if he is a capable administrator like Narendra Modi or he is another Mamata Bannerjee. This is an important issue that needs to be resolved. If he can govern well then the other parties and nation can benefit from his wisdom and ways. If he turns out to be another Mamata Bannerjee then the voters should know that vote for this guy is merely a wasted protest vote. West Bengal can afford Mamata Bannerjee’s style of governance but India cannot afford that. Indian voters need to know that.