Who Hates the Aam Aadmi Party?

What is everyone’s problem? When the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is quiet, it is accused of doing nothing. If it talks about about its progress, the party is called arrogant. When Arvind Kejriwal refuses security, he is accused of symbolism. When he is allotted a five-bedroom house, he is blamed for not being symbolic enough. Why does the media stalk the AAP ministers like paparazzi, stupidly evaluating the party’s performance by the minute?

Headlines Today conducted a sting operation where three Delhi Jal Board officers were caught taking bribes. This was then debated on Headlines Today prime time under the headline – “Kejriwal’s anti-graft war cry meaningless, babus sweep his promises.” The reporter Rahul Kanwal passionately propagated the line flashing on the screens behind him – “Nine Days, Zero Change.”

Zero change? Isn’t anyone following the news?

Since coming to power, the AAP has transferred more than 800 Delhi Jal Board officers, including the CEO. All AAP ministers have refused security, in a bid to end Delhi’s VIP culture. Every household in Delhi has been guaranteed 20 kiloliters of free water a month. Low volume consumers of electricity have had their electricity rates slashed by 50 percent. Delhi’s notorious power companies are finally being audited. The party has found a quick and low-cost solution for homeless people seeking shelter at night - refurbished abandoned buses. The AAP has set up an anti-donation helpline for parents of school-going children, to be launched on Jan 12. Halfway through Kanwal’s debate, Kejriwal had already suspended the three officers caught in the sting operation.

The AAP is also changing they way media does it’s job – corruption and governance are the top two topics in every medium. The party’s success now has other politicians shunning the VIP culture and talking about involving the common people in their policies. Well-meaning citizens who wanted to work for India, but were repulsed by murky politics are now joining the Aam Aadmi Party.

But not everyone is convinced. Nine whole days since the AAP came to power, it hasn’t managed to get rid of the 60-year-old corruption problem that has thrived at the hands of BJP, Congress and friends!

Everyone, including the media, has silently watched political parties and industrialists exploit the country for years. Now, when an honest party comes to power, the corrupt parties criticise it for not eliminating corruption within a week. Its nine-day performance is nitpicked, prodded and dismissed by the very politicians who resisted the expulsion of criminals from politics, the people who were averse to the Lokpal bill, the ones who fought against disclosing their election funding, the parties who refuse to be brought under the RTI. These people really hate the Aam Aadmi Party.

Kanwal and panelists Vir Sanghvi, Abhishek Singhvi (Congress) and Nirmala Seetharaman (BJP) repeatedly complained that corruption existed in Delhi despite an AAP government. They seemed vindicated and comforted by the sting operation. They pooh-poohed Kejriwal and his promise of “utopia.” “AAP has no fear factor,” said one. “Nobody is taking Kejriwal seriously,” said another. But they have it all backwards. AAP is in power because of such corrupt practices. This is exactly what they are here to fight.

AAP has run a one-issue campaign, said Sanghvi. But corruption is not one issue. It maliciously pervades everything in India from electricity and water to land and army equipment. It is India’s most dangerous problem.

Each time Shazia Ilmi (AAP)  tried to bring up the Jan Lokpal Bill on the debate, she was (literally) muted. Laws are of no use, Kanwal and Seetharaman said. The anti-rape law hasn’t brought down the number of rapes, so the Jan Lokpal won’t bring down corruption. (Like, seriously?) Again, they had it backwards. The existence of a law doesn’t forestall crimes from happening. The consequence of the law will (a) restrain some from committing a crime for fear of punishment (b) give the victim of a crime a fair chance to get justice. It is nonsensical to imply that laws were meant to stop crimes by merely being written, and nobody really believes that. But if a nonsensical argument can save the BJP and Congress from the Jan Lokpal Bill, they will run with it.

“There were those who thought that Kejriwal coming to power would automatically sweep away corruption from the national capital,” Kanwal said. Who are these idiotic people? Because, we didn’t expect corruption to disappear instantly. The AAP said they will work to eliminate corruption from the political system by coming to power and cleaning up the system from the inside. That made sense to us.

But “his rhetoric is not easy to transfer to reality,” Kanwal argued. Who said it was going to be easy? All these years, corruption in India has gone unchecked by those in power and encouraged by lazy, entitled citizens seeking an easy way out. It seeped so deep into the country’s pores that we began accepting it as a part of our lives, like the sun, or rain.

Many of us believe that if we don’t pay bribes, report corrupt practices and participate in our country’s governance, we can slowly stop corruption from eating into India’s development. But we are told this is too idealistic because corruption is entrenched and embedded and impossible to obliterate. (Wait, who let it get so entrenched and embedded?) The only solution is humility, said Singhvi, the AAP must stop being arrogant.

Arrogant? Arrogant like the BJP taking the corrupt B.S.Yeddyurappa back? Or arrogant like the Narendra Modi government that seems to sail through creepy snooping problems and human rights violations? Politicians being defended despite making shockingly sexist remarks and being indifferent to rapes and child deaths - arrogant. Arrogant is Mulayam Singh reacting to children dying at Muzaffarnagar by insinuating that the riot victims were fake and were in fact political activists. Salman “guttersnipe” Khurshid – arrogant.

The AAP stood up to this arrogance. Kejriwal inspired the country to stand up to it. Someone finally awakened us to the reality of being cheated by the people we elected. Your job is not to just vote and pay taxes, Kejriwal and team told us. Participate in your democracy, change the system, make it work for you.

The AAP brought back honesty and patriotism into fashion. That makes a lot of people uncomfortable.

source of info :preethidumpala.wordpress.