Taken the oath, now the CM : Taking the people along
- Sangai Express Editorial :: December 30, 2013 -

In stating that "It is not Kejriwal who took oath today (as the Chief Minister of Delhi), but it is the common man..it is the victory of the common man", Arvind Kejriwal is waving the magic wand of taking the people along with his Government, involving them in the process of governance.

How far the AAP Government with outside support from the Congress will be in taking the people along with them will depend to a large extent on the support of the eight Congress MLAs and of course the BJP, which is the single largest party in the Delhi Legislative Assembly.

Unmandated Government, with 28 MLAs in a House of 70, Kejriwal and his men certainly have their tasks cut out.

Impressive debut at the hustings, giving a fitting reply to the skeptics who earlier had dared the street protest led by Anna Hazare at Ramlila Maidan two and half years ago to enter electoral politics and see how the people respond to their call.

This much is true, but the interesting point is to see the Congress turn the poll debacle to now being the pivot on which the AAP Government will rest.

With just 8 MLAs, the Congress has managed to occupy an important position, with the ability to pull the strings from behind. This is about the pitfalls of leading a minority Government and Arvind Kejriwal must surely know this.

Politics, as seen and practised in India, is not only about successfully selling one's ideas and aspirations to the people but also about fine tuning the balancing act, especially when the party in power has fallen short of the required number.

Taking the people along and taking the MLAs along, who have extended outside support, are two different things for power equation falls in the domain of the elected people and not the people who elected them.

Kejriwal is no doubt the flavour of the season, but one wrong move or one move which may annoy the Congress could turn this flavour into something entirely different.

What however cannot be dismissed and is above argument is the fact that the people of Delhi have shown a lesson to the rest of the country.

It is not Kejriwal nor the AAP but about the issue of corruption which has been institutionalised at the grass root level.

That the AAP managed to ride the anti-corruption wave and win over a large number of Delhiites is something which is laudatory.

Whether it will have a cascading effect on other States or in the upcoming Lok Sabha election remains to be seen, but already a lesson has been drafted and scripted by the voters of Delhi successfully, though it fell short of giving the mandate to the AAP to form the Government.

From street politics, from fasting at the Ramlila Maidan, from raising the pitch without taking the plunge into politics, Arvind Kejriwal and the AAP have managed to switch over to mainstream politics successfully, at least so far.

It certainly has not been easy going for the AAP. With Anna Hazare, the man, who inspired the movement against corruption, snapping all ties with electoral politics and by extension the AAP, Kejriwal and his men must have had a tough time to come this far.

A long distance they have managed to cover in a period of just one year.

The oath has been taken. Kejriwal is now the Chief Minister of Delhi.

How he manages to live to up to the promises and assurances given in his party's election manifesto is something which will be known sooner than later.

Whether the AAP Government survives its full term or whether a snap poll will come is a question that has been doing the round and not without reason, but the important point for the people of the country to remember is the lesson that was learnt from the impressive debut of the AAP.

This is the bottomline.