Politics : Arvind Kejriwal

An activist turned politician, Arvind Kejriwal, after giving much grief to the ruling government, has targeted BJP president Nitin Gadkari to prove that the agenda of India Against Corruption (IAC) is not prejudiced towards or against any specific party, but purely is against corruption. The moot point here is, will targeting all major political parties at the same time impede Arvind Kejriwal from reaching his goal?

After having disassociated from Anna Hazare on the point of building a new political party, Kejriwal had announced his intentions of establishing a new political party on October 2, 2012. Immediately, he adopted a strategy of exposing individual politicians rather than attacking a party as a whole. Initially, he raised concerns over an alleged nexus between the realty giant DLF and Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra. Then, he decided to take on Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid over allegations of financial irregularities in an NGO run by his wife. Subsequently, Kejriwal decided to dispel any suspicions of BJP backing his campaign by directly attacking Nitin Gadkari.

TSI interviewed this modern day hero (interview in the last issue of TSI; http://www.thesundayindian.com/en/story/a-one-man-opposition/7/42124/), who said, "The moment you attack them [corrupt politicians] with all honesty, they run for cover... Let them call me names, let them target me. I am open to every probe."

However altruist his intentions have been, there clearly are some lessons that can be learnt by the IAC. Firstly, as his mentor Anna Hazare had advised him, there might be sense in sticking to singular issues for a longer time till they reach their conclusion than jumping from one issue to another every week. There is a growing sense of worry that if Kejriwal himself moves from one case to another without any clear verdict from the court, and more importantly the electorate, then the impact behind each issue might get weakened. The Robert Vadra-DLF case, for example, has slowly taken a backseat.

The second and more important lesson has been the timing of revelations by Kejriwal and his team. Would it not have made more sense if Kejriwal had opened the can of worms against Vadra, Khurshid, and others just before the Parliamentary elections? Would it not have been better for Kejriwal to have waited for a few more months, as that might have influenced the electorate much better than now, where there is a fear that these issues will 'die their natural death'? Kejriwal could well consider holding back his ace of a revelation – which some mention is coming up soon – until just before voting begins for the central elections.

At the same time has been the media world's strangest of strange behaviour towards Kejriwal. Rather than applauding his team's efforts to the sky, most national dailies are choosing to treat him plainly as a news item than as a thought leader to back. No wonder the Indian media today is considered a stooge of the powers that be.