I always believed and still do that Jayaprakash Narayan (official) is one of the best politician in country and his party is the only party which has stuck to idealism it was founded on and first party to do away with freebies, money and muscles power in elections. I always supported them but aligned with BJP for practicality. But, I cant understand why many idealist supporter of AAP failed to support it and how will they explain these minutes of a meeting that happened between JP Narayan, Kejriwal and Prashant Bhusan. My husband uses the phrase JP is AAP ka BAAP! I laugh it off usually, but this video struck a raw nerve - enough for me to make one comment. Coincidentally, I am listening to Arvind Kejariwal spewing his regular desh ko bachana hai, sab lootere hai and we are not for party politics, we want to save the country lines to the reporter of CNN IBN, inside the sivaganga express enroute to Varanasi. And I am thinking yaa sure.. I was in the room when the conversation between JP and Arvind happened - JP said we must do this for the country. I am coming 90 % of the way, simply because I see this as an opportunity to unite people who can work for real change at this crucial time for India. Arvind and Prashant stuck to their lame jadoo is the big wave. It must be only jadoo. We told them we are not even sure of your ideologies - your policy papers are not out yet. We told them we hope to see the new movement of AAP grow in a statesman-like manner and be willing to accomodate different voices at the table, one of which would be loksatta. Working together was possible now; in the long run once comfort is established we could look at closer relationships, but an immediate merger as they demanded meant wiping out the identity of loksatta and the liberal ideology it promoted. The response was lukewarm. The next meeting was to have been in the presence of Yogendra Yadav, but they called it off the night before. Wonder what thought process they had. And now they have announced a candidate against JP in Malkajgiri - and funnier still, they say they will work to defeat JP because of his stand on FDI and GM crops and blah blah and because of his apparent alliance with TDP and BJP. Phew!! Frankly, Im getting irritated with these desh ko bachana hai monologues. They are untrue and Arvind has no intention of desh-bachaoing. His intention is to build a brand - that is all. Desh-bachaoing requires a study of our countrys problems, coming up with solutions, encouraging debate and discussions on those solutions, looking at best practices in other places, and creating a consensus so that the final solution we choose to implement will have maximum support, to ensure its implementation is possible. Simply abusing EVERYBODY as thieves and giving one my way-or the highway solution is no desh-bachaoing. Today the dialogue may be about clean and corrupt politics. But as loksatta has always maintained, honesty is the bare minimum standard. It is the basic expectation of anybody in public life. Once we move beyond the clean-corrupt debate, in the subsequent elections the conversation will have to be about the methods to be employed to fight Indias biggest enemy - poverty. In choosing these methods it is important to have in the political space parties that propound different views - those pro-subsidies- those against, those pro-freebies-those against, those pro-government control of schools, buses, hospitals, liquor shops - and those against - and even those with middle-approaches, those who think taxes should increase - those who think taxes should decrease and widen the net, etc . But all these views must be allowed to be part of the debating space of public policy. They cannot be wiped away - and a monopolistic political space be created, however clean that monopoly may claim to be!! That is not pro-India. Which is why I feel very short-changed by the IAC movement which got taken over by a monopolistic political thinking that claims annihilating everybody else is the only answer
Posted on: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 04:40:27 +0000
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