I must apologize. I was wrong. I had ended my last letter wondering aloud whether you were, in fact, an activist faking as a politician. It seems the truth is you were always a politician dressed up as an activist. There is a eureka moment for every new discovery. The real Indira Gandhi revealed herself on the night on 25 June 1975 when she imposed the Emergency, we saw the real Vajpayee when he had Kargil vacated the real Sonia Gandhi showed herself when she gave up Prime Ministership in favor of Dr Singh. My eureka moment about you was the day drove down to Bareilly to pray at the dargah and ran into Tauqueer Reza purely by chance. A lot is known about the Maulana. Lesser known is the fact that he had held a ministerial rank in the UP government but had quit his alliance with the SP in September. In Facebook terms he was ‘single’ and therefore available. Any party could have approached him but AAP did. All credit to you for the alacrity you showed. There are two small issues which small-minded people are raising. It is best you ignore them. They feel a party like yours should not be asking religious leaders for votes. That is nonsense. In at least 5 constituencies muslims make up a large part of the electorate; surely you have the right to treat them as a vote bank as the others do. They also cannot for some reason believe the co-incidence. I am not one of them. I can. You drove to Bareilly to pay your respects at the Dargah. Taqueer Raza was hanging around at the Dargah. He invited you for a cuppa. The two of you had a simple two-hour blind-date. Why is this so tough to believe? After all haven’t we all seen the Pope hanging around when we go to the Vatican? Happens all the time. And the other issue is Taqueer’s Fatwa on Tasleema. How could you have known? It is not as if you are Google. And when the shit hit the ceiling on your return, instead of reading and finding out you just asked the Maulana if he had issued the Fatwa. He said no and that is end of matter. Why believe Taslima Nasleem? Why believe the media if it doesn’t suit you? I think people need to understand that now you are a politician. Expecting you to live up to unreal expectations built by an activist is ridiculous. Politics in India is a tough akhara and once you are in it, you have to play by the rules. The way you handled the matter of spending a few thousand crores on a 240 metre statue was also commendable. Another Kejriwal in a different era may have raged and ranted against such a waste as he did against Mayawati on many occasions. But on the Patel issue, you handled yourself with great restraint. It was a smart move to disappear from the public radar till the controversy died down. Who knows how these BJP-type voters would have behaved if you had denounced the wastage? They have this thing for Patel and you don’t want to take a chance. Surely that should be easy to understand? But all this is nothing compared to the finesse you have shown in your selection of candidates for Delhi. Kamaal kar diya sir. You check-mated even Gulliver in his travails with the pygmies. 27 out of the 65 given tickets so far are under-graduates. I am glad you are finally exploding the myth that education helps. 20% of the Lok Sabha is undergraduate and we know how badly they have distinguished themselves. Trying out with over 40% undergrads is an extraordinary leap of faith. 40 out of 65 are activists and social workers. We will finally have a government that will understand the concept of service. The charge that social service is all it will understand is specious. There is no reason to believe that social workers can’t run companies, mega-organizations, corporations and ministries. And who said property dealers, shop keepers and professional RTI activists won’t make good ministers. The experiment has just not been tried. There is always a first time. Why not start with the nation’s capital? It is also a falsehood that virtually no one, not even one person among the sixty-five odd has ever been a part of or actually headed an organization. You have. You were in the government for over a decade. And one or two have retired from the army and police. That’s not bad. Am sure if we look very hard indeed, we may find someone who has worked in a mid to large private organization for a month or two. There are only six women may be there could have been more but as someone said on a TV show yours is an Aam Aadmi Party and this quibble on numbers of women represented is really quite misplaced. Out of this lot of 65 you will need a dozen or so ministers. You will have no difficulty at all. Access one of those easily available programs to randomize the names and then pick your 12. After all you have to pick out from the available talent. This will be democracy at work. In any case this talent-shalent stuff is overdone. Why does one need special talent to run the country? Aren’t good intentions enough? These issues should worry the likes of MMS, Chidambaram, Dikshit and so on as they run a corrupt government, not the party which has god on its side. Bhagwan ke sahare sab theek ho jayega. I have not the slightest doubt that the vast majority of your candidates are squeaky clean. My pick of the lot is Krishan Kumar a former police constable who worked hard and managed to buy 4 plots of land. Intermediate passed cricketer Ashok Chauhan has 3 flats in Delhi. Former Congressman Deshraj Raghav owns ‘many plots and flats’ and cars and farmland. Hardly surprising when your occupation is ‘vyapar’. Former BJP man Mahendra Yadav has no property but manages to make his living out of rental income. There are others too who do impossible things. Your list of candidates is interesting. Some finicky people had expected somewhat higher level of disclosure from a party whose only real issue is probity. Even a cynic like me had thought that disclosures would be seriously addressed. I had actually assumed that at the very minimum ‘Occupation’ would be precise and ‘assets’ would include year of acquisition and area/size of plot or flat. It is difficult to reconcile with the pace at which you have jettisoned the issues that had brought you on to the stage. Took no time for the chaddi and the cape to come off. Good bye Superman, Hello Kent Clark.
Posted on: Sat, 09 Nov 2013 11:22:55 +0000
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