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.