Sunday, January 5, 2014

Arvind Kejriwal

Going by the average age of Indian politicians Arvind Kejriwal is young at 45. An IIT alumnus plus a top level beurocrat, his entry into public life began more than 10 years back when he resigned from income tax department to begin his crusde against corruption which as I have written many times in this blog is destroying this country and well on it's way to make India a banana republic. He started an NGO called Parivarthan meaning Change. He was also partly responsible for making RTI [right to information] an act of the parliament.Then came his association with the social activist Anna Hazare and the movement to get a pwerful Ambudsmen to supervise our polity. It is a tragedy that they had to part ways due to differences in the way to go about achieving this objective. While Anna believed the it is possible to do this by forcing the existing political parties to pass an act, Kejriwal thought the only way is to enter politics. This he did by forming the Aam Admi party less than a year ago.

No one including I, gave his and his friends much chance of success. What resulted after the Delhi elections was nothing short of spectacular. When most thought he would get a handful of seats, he ended up getting 28 seats in the 72 member assembly, and after some drama went on to become the chief minister of the sate of Delhi.

Shanthi Bhushan, the famous civil rights lawyer and a close confidant of Kejriwal, is now busy organising the party workers on a nationwide basis. The Indian general elections are due in April/ May this year. I am one of those who will anxiously wait to see if the Aam Aadmi party will be able to repeat it performance and make a difference in our parliament's functioning.

Friday, January 3, 2014

New year
It has been my practice to wish all of you before the advent but this time I am 3 days late. No particular reason. As those of you who read my blog may have noticed I have been tardy with my postings most of last year. I hope to make amends this year. As is usual I place gratefully on record my thanks to all of you in general, my family, friends and patients in particular for all the affection and regard showed.

2013 has not been a great year for my country. Scam after scam involving thousands of crores of rupees were a monthly affair. So much so one thought rightly whether there is any honest politician or bureaucrat remaining at all in my country In this pall of gloom a silver lining appeared on the 4th of December by the name of Arvind Kejriwal.

In my next post I will write about him and my old and the new Bangalore