Admiration for Arvind Kejriwal is pouring in at his alma mater IIT Kharagpur. The Delhi Chief Minister has suddenly earned a new appellation who has taught the technical minds to go social.
Kejri, as he was commonly known by his mechanical engineering pals in the mid-80s, has at once ‘beaten back’ all those career-minded engineering students. At the campus politics is no more a pile of ‘manure’, fit to be evaded contemptuously.
In fact with Kejriwal’s emergence, the “Kharagpur janta” (read engineering students) have suddenly metamorphosed from a clan of snooty elite into a veritable Aam Aadmi of sorts. “I am in two minds: Between a plum placement and a political career. True Arvindji has shown that you have life beyond the machineries,” says Ashis of Civil Engineering.
Another student Arnab has decided to call it quits to what he calls “run-of-the-mill” career. “I think engineering students’ choice is not my choice,” he says insisting, “Arvind da has infected me and many like me with a different virus. We want to do something like him for the teeming millions. Now I feel ashamed of even thinking of being so selfish as to mind my own business when the country burns.”
The students got more emotional after a message devoted to the Kharagpur IIT posted on two Aam Aadmi Party pages read “never underestimate the power of common man. Congrats to all the Kgp Janta.”
Maybe all students do not feel ideologically one with the Delhi Chief Minister. Maybe some of them still question the “lack of political philosophy” in Kejriwal’s ism which tends to break the system but accept the ideology on which it stands since the Independence.
“What he preaches is only a patch work and does not address the root cause of the anomaly” says Prasun, a recent pass-out, adding “however, Arvindji has shown all of us a point from where we have to start. He has at least started. It depends how and when the others take things over for a bigger ideological restructuring of the polity.” Now well-placed with a plum `8-lakh-plus job, Prasun is planning to try civil services.
Amit, another IITian, recalls how politics used to be a taboo at the campus even a few years ago when even those who came from politically inclined families preferred to keep things within themselves “as everyone was so academic, so elitist and so career minded. If you talked politics you were contemptuously ignored as a lesser being: As though you were an ant.”
Anand Reddy says how “Kejriwalji is showing us the way to usher in a new India of which we will become a proud citizen.”
The IITian who burst crackers on Saturday with some friends, hopes, like Oxford or Harvard one day IIT Kharagpur will be counted among the elite institutions giving India its first Prime Minister.
On whether he was sounding too ambitious, the engineer-to-be asks: “Did anyone think of Arvindji becoming a Chief Minister even a few years agoIJ Hats off to him because he had the gall to quit his job and take a plunge to change India.”
Meanwhile, AAP victory in Delhi tended to pump up Kolkata where scores of aam aadmi on Sunday responded to AAP’s membership drive.
Ranjana Singh, a local AAP leader, said the party saw several hundred people queuing up to enrol as members at the party’s membership camp at Metro Channel at Esplanade.
“The people are coming in good number, asking questions,” she said adding the party was taking `10 and a small bio-data to enrol them as members. “We hope the number to go up in coming days and particularly if Arvindji comes here,” she said.
The party’s Bengal unit is currently running an ad hoc committee and would soon form a State committee, insiders said.