Kejriwal is for Mobocracy – What India needs is enlightened democracy, where we entrust our nation to leaders who have a clean past and a vision of the future. We don’t want common people making decisions on issues of national importance because it is beyond their intellectual capacity to understand these issues in their entirety and propose solutions that go beyond immediate emotional choices. The ideal that Kejriwal dreams of, where the “common man” is directly involved in every decision, is the mobocracy that leads to forced shutdown during Hartals and would only result in more populistic policies (such as caste based reservation) that have pushed our nation into the dark well we’re already in.

Aam Admi Party’s vision is reactive and shallow – Rather than looking at the root cause of the problems faced by our system, AAP is tragetting some of its prominent symptoms. Take, for example, their stand against dynastic politics. While the rotten dynastic politics in congress is definitely a bane, it is not just about the bloodline. It’s more about senior members of the party not having the guts to make a claim to leadership, and preferring to ride under a figure-head rather than risk the leadership falling into the hands of their more powerful rivals within the party. The root cause of this may be traced to not having leaders today who can compare in stature with leaders from a few decades back, and the primary reason for this would be the role of “aam aadmi” in moulding today’s leaders. Pre-independence leaders led our nation to follow their vision and ideas, whereas our rulers of today can do no better than follow public sentiments in an effort to guarantee their own election to power. I won’t be surprised if 20 years from now AAP is using Anna Hazare’s name in improving their chances of electoral success just as Congress is now hanging on to the Nehru dynasty.  

They have already started following the current – Initially, Kejriwal and company was all for meritocracy and against reservation based on caste and religion. As part of Youth for Equality, Kejriwal used to support the anti-reservation movement. But perhaps he sees now that to come to power via elections, the easiest path is to follow vote-bank politics. A look at their vision document will show that AAP endorses reservation based on caste, religion and gender (among other possibilities). Kejriwal has already started getting the pulse of the Aam Aadmi.

There is nothing new, concrete, or promising – Other than the Lokpal, there is no clear vision on how to achieve the “Swaraj” of their quest. There’s talk of all good things like “The state must provide free, equal and quality school education to all children” which we already know today. So as long as they don’t know how to achieve this, all they have is a wish and not a vision.