Achhe din only for Kejriwal's 'khaas aadmis'?
They say that things that you say or do in your life come back to haunt you one day. This threat has become even more real with the advent of the internet because whatever one posts on the internet stays on the internet. Forever.
Ask Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, who, on March 25, 2012, during the height of his Lokpal agitation, very sanctimoniously tweeted:
“No consensus amongst political parties on Lokpal in 44 years. If they have to increase their salaries, there is consensus in 5 minutes.”
I bet Arvind Kejriwal must be ruing the day he tweeted this. For a man who rode to power on the strength of his agitation against corruption in politics, "change" in the way politics is done in India and the promise of "swarajya", he seems to have forgotten the ideals he stood for. He also seems to have forgotten the hopes, aspirations and expectations that the people of Delhi, who voted him into power with a record breaking and thumping majority in 2015 and gave him 67 out of a total of 70 seats in the legislative Assembly, have from him. The man who promised to stand for the common man and work for him, and even named his political outfit "Aam Aadmi Party", now seems to care more for his own interests than those of the "common people".
I am saying all this in view of the reports in the media on October 7 that revealed that an "independent panel" appointed by Delhi’s AAP government has recommended that the salaries of the members of legislative Assembly of the national capital be raised by up to 400 per cent. If accepted, these recommendations could make the total salary of each legislator a hefty Rs 2,37,000 per month from the current Rs 88,000, including various allowances wherein the basic salary of Rs 12,000 per month has been recommended to be increased to Rs 50,000 per month – a hefty hike.
As soon as the news appeared, social media exploded with even the supporters of AAP criticising and trashing this move by the Kejriwal government. Some called it "extortion" while many others called it "loot".
The ire and the outrage of the common man of Delhi is because the Kejriwal government, instead of focusing on its poll promises, has been a government that has been riddled with internal strife and infighting in the period that it has been in power in Delhi. Be it the expulsion of founding members like Yogendra Yadav, Prashant Bhushan, professor Anand Kumar and Ajit Jha for anti-party activities, or the removal of their internal Lokpal, Admiral Ramdas, for ostensibly not toeing the Kejriwal line.
The anger is also because the man, who agitated and even submitted the resignation of his government, the first time around on the issue of the appointment of a Lokpal, has not even cared to appoint his internal Lokpal or the Delhi state Lokayuta in the months that he has come back to power with an overwhelming majority and has the numbers in the legislative assembly at its disposal to appoint one without any resistance from anybody.
The man who promised the citizens of Delhi free electricity, free water, free Wi-Fi, women’s safety, better roads, 50 new hospitals, 20 new schools plus a corruption free government that would work for the people and for which the interests of the people would be paramount has been seen as floundering majorly on all counts.
Let alone providing better healthcare, the Delhi government has not been even able to protect people of Delhi from the dreaded dengue fever that has killed 37 people till date and sent over 7600 to the hospital.
The Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP government has also found itself in the midst of an unprecedented "garbage crisis" in Delhi. A strike by sanitation workers had turned east Delhi into a huge garbage dump for more than days, posing a serious threat to people's health wherein about 15,000 tonnes of waste had been dumped by the roadside and in residential areas and 12,000 sanitation workers had refused to work unless their salaries were paid forcing the high court to issue notice to the government for payment of salaries to the civic body staff.
Though reports of unilateral and self decided increase in salaries of our MPs and MLAs is not uncommon and has been the subject of much discussion, this 400 per cent hike recommended by the panel appointed by the AAP government to increase its own salaries when the norm and average of annual increase in salaries in corporate India stands at 10.7 per cent, has left the Kejriwal government looking like extremely self-serving. It has also exposed the hypocrisy of the politics of Arvind Kejriwal with many disappointed supporters of the man asking, "So, how is he any different from the other politicians in the cesspool of politics?"
The joke doing the rounds is that even though the "acche din" promised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi may not have arrived for the common man of India, Arvind Kejriwal has ensured good days for his legislators in Delhi.
The man who roamed around Delhi in crumpled bush shirts, loose trousers and his trade mark muffler with a white Gandhi cap that had "Main hoon Aam Aadmi" inscribed on it and the man who said he wanted no security or the perks of power and was quite happy travelling in his Maruti Wagon R or even the Metro now seems to have become an anti-thesis of himself and laid bare the hopelessness of the common man with the "system" and its political masters. For all those who had hope that a new man and a new ideology will bring about positive change in India, this has indeed been a life lesson.
Upward mobility is here! Hurrah!
The "aam aadmis" have become "khaas aadmis"!
Well, if not all, at least 67 of them in the Delhi legislative Assembly surely have.