The fictional Don Quixote had one Sancho Panza; the real Arvind Kejriwal has many. They are not just loyal to him but have contributed to the brainwash that the supremo is without blemish
The problem with Arvind Kejriwal, to put it bluntly, is that he thinks no end of himself. His self-appraisal is so scintillating that it is vastly disproportionate to his abilities. This is matched by his peculiar knack of latching on to non-issues at the cost of reality. like the fictional Don Quixote, he imagines himself to be a benevolent knight charging at windmills he sees as marauding armies. But Quixote was indeed well-meaning.
Quixote had one Sancho Panza; Kejriwal has many, and they are not just loyal to him but have also contributed to the brainwash that the Aam Aadmi Party supremo is without blemish. He can call the country's Prime Minister a “psychopath” and still have his men defend the remark. He can dub a senior Cabinet Minister “corrupt” and depend on the backing of his loyalists who want nothing by way of even primary evidence to support the accusation. If there is a crime in Delhi, the Prime Minister is responsible; if the thread of a kite slashes somebody’s throat, the Prime Minister’s policies are accountable; if water scarcity hits residents of the quasi-State he governs, the Prime Minister is answerable; if an epidemic occurs, the Prime Minister must be held guilty; if election outcomes through the electronic voting machines do not show his party’s victory, the Prime Minister has ordered the machines rigged.
Kejriwal, it appears, cannot justify his existence without sullying the image of a third person. His politics works not on embellishing his performance but on demeaning others. He is also full of contradictions. When he tied up with the 'corrupt' Congress during his first short tenure, he had justified the move as being taken in the interests of the people of Delhi. When he broke away, it was again in the people's interest!
Being a bundle of contradictions is bad enough; worse is his habit of picking up fights like a street thug. It’s always him (the good) versus the rest (the evil). Kejriwal feuds with the Union Minister for Home Affairs, the lieutenant Governor, the Commissioner of Delhi Police, the bureaucrats, and nearly with everyone else he sees as ‘agents’ of the Modi Government. He must take the help of party colleague and poet Kumar Vishwas, who has for now been convinced against leaving the party in a huff, to understand what Kabir had remarked lyrically: ‘When I ventured to find a person with negative qualities, I found none. But when I looked within myself, I realised that none was worse than me.’
After the Municipal Corporation of Delhi debacle, Kejriwal has admitted, after a good deal of prevarication, to mistakes his party may have committed, and promised to course-correct. This in itself is an achievement because the AAP supremo is not given to such modesty. He had found nothing wrong in showing the door to party founders Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav, and made sure they were thoroughly humiliated even as they exited. At one point, when half his Cabinet members were accused of serious crimes and some had to quit in the wake, he valiantly defended them.
Kejriwal may behave like an ostrich, but he is not blind to the developments around him. Perhaps he sees disasters in the near horizon and is desperate to pre-empt them. For that to happen, he must begin to listen to sane voices, even if they are critical of his functioning. He is the ultimate referendum man — he wanted to conduct a referendum to determine whether Delhi should become a full-fledged State! He wishes to take executive decisions on the basis of SMS feedback and the cacophony of voices that come from so-called mohallah sabhas. It’s time he deploys this technique to ascertain what the people feel about his leadership and his brand of politics — just in case he is suspicious of the results of the MCD election and the Rajouri Garden by-poll.
Can Arvind Kejriwal re-invent himselfIJ It’s a theoretical possibility if the right permutations and combinations fall in place. But then, order is not the AAP leader’s forte; the disorder he engineers not only keeps his flock busy but also seeks to shift focus from his failings. That’s how it’s likely to remain.
And, how does one expect — even if one wants to — the AAP supremo to show moral might, when he wants to fight his private defamation case with money from the tax-payersIJ