Kejriwal has betrayed the aam aadmi by siding with Sri Sri

By putting his weight behind a godman's environmentally destructive extravaganza, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has revealed his dark side.

As environmentalists across Delhi staged a losing battle against the politically well connected Sri Sri Ravishankar, to secure the Yamuna, they counted on Kejriwal to stand by them. But to their shock, Kejriwal has backed the godman in what can only be explained as pure populism. By doing so, he has shown how he has come a long way from being an idealistic activist to a shrewed and calculative politician.

When Kejriwal arrived on the political scene, he rose on the back of the promise of being different from the opportunistic, cunning, orthodox, populistic and regressive political class that has held India back. Kejriwal has lived up to this promise in certain instances. Thus, he has made himself accessible to the masses, he is stern on corruption and has focused on health and education. However, the Delhi chief minister has belied the people's hope in many other instances, which has had profound consequences. Here are the four most important points on which Kejriwal has embodied the very vices that once he stood against:

Hobnobbing with godmen and preying on people's religiosity

Any objective analysis of the controversial Yamuna event of Sri Sri would indicate its environmentally disastrous effects. Kejriwal is the chief minister of a state whose vulnerability to floods would increase and whose main river would be harmed as a result of such an extravaganza. This should have made him sit up and prevent the event from taking place through the use of the Delhi Pollution Control Board.

Instead, he connived with the godman and helped him break norms with impunity and now has asked the civil society to stop questioning the event because the "NGT (National Green Tribunal) has approved it".

The NGT has only fined Sri Sri while clearing the event, and the authorities who should have fought for our environment caved in to a powerful godman. The NGT clearance came on the day the Delhi High Court had described the event as an environmental disaster.

But why should that matter when you can appease a powerful godman and gain access to lakhs of his followers? What is worse, on top of the unprincipled catering to vote banks, Kejriwal has the guts to ask the defendants of the environment not to do politics, when the only side doing politics is his.

The carte blanche that our godmen enjoy is harmful to the society in multiple ways. It undermines rule of law, transfers public resources to private organisations and leaves cheated followers without any recourse, and as the Sri Sri controversy has shown, can harm the environment. Since Kejriwal promised to fight against the compromised system, this would have been a good occasion to show his sincerity. But alas, politicians will be politicians - preaching is one thing, practising quite another.

Also this is not a one-off incident of Kejriwal hobnobbing with godmen. He has been religiously cultivating links with every godman with a following worthy of being a vote bank. This mixing of religion and politics is harmful for both. Perhaps Kejriwal needs to be reminded of these words by Hugo Black: "A union of government and religion degrades religion and destroys government."

Playing the nationalistic card: Liberal on even day, conservative on odd

Creating hysteria around nationalism is a favourite sport of our politicians. Why address people's real concern when they can be diverted with circuses around nationalism and anti-nationalism? One had expected that Kejriwal, being a modern politician, would desist from such ultra-nationalistic rhetoric and instead, promote a new discourse around people's issues and the rights of marginalised communities that get neglected when the discourse shifts to nationalism.

But here again, Kejriwal has chosen to play the same hyper-nationalistic game that the BJP is a master in. In the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) affair, he jumped on the bandwagon, calling for the arrest of students for a mere speech.

He didn't try to educate the public on why our nation would be better off by defeating any such speech by a better one, than affording such elements the halo of being victims of coercion by the intolerant majority. Kejriwal, instead, choose the easy way of repeatedly demanding the students be arrested.

What he fails to understand is that the bigger bane of modern nations are threats to free speech than one-off uncomfortable speeches here and there. But then it requires a statesman like Mahatma Gandhi to change the mentality of the people than give in to popular prejudices.

Here again, Kejriwal has shown how shallow his commitment to the liberal ethos is, like most of our self-proclaimed liberal politicians. We have no true politician of significance who can take up the liberal cause even when it's an unpopular thing to do.

Running the party like a dictator

It's easy to snipe at rivals for being dictatorial. But Kejriwal can himself be accused of it. He told us endlessly how the common man had no voice in the political establishment which was being run like private limited companies of leaders. We believed he was not just criticising the prevalent system but also proposing to be different.

But the clock has come a full circle and he runs his own party in a dictatorial manner brooking no dissent. Loyalty to Kejriwal, rather than suitability to particular roles has become the greater criterion for appointment to key posts in the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Anyone who opposes Kejriwal is swiftly shown the door.

In the long-term, this can be fatal for his party. It will create a party devoid of richness of opinion, it will lead to talent gradually moving away as it seldom flourishes in an environment where dissent is throttled, where loyalty is privileged over merit. Also this cult of personality around Kejriwal diminishes the AAP's ability to correct itself and reduces an issue-based movement to a person-centric one, vulnerable to be destroyed by the weakness that every person has.

Neglecting women and lower caste representation

Democracy in its essence requires that all sections of the society get to participate in the decision which affects them. An important way to ensure this is that all segments should have their due representation in various institutions. But in India, our political parties are predominantly controlled by upper caste males. Kejriwal's party is no different.

A quick look at the AAP's top leadership makes this clear. Out of Kejriwal's 67 MLAs, 30 are from the upper castes even though they constitute only three percent of Delhi's population. Ditto with women's representation, with only six of the 67 AAP MLAs being women. None of the ministers of the Kejriwal goverment is a woman.

Contrast this with the system put in place by Canada's new prime minister Justin Trudeau who, like Kejriwal, came to power with the promise of changing a rotten system. Half of his cabinet collegues are women. Furthermore, he has ensured that minorities like Sikhs and other underprivileged communities are sufficiently represented in his cabinet.

Kejriwal, on the other hand, hasn't meaningfully delivered on his promise of ensuring that common citizens get representation in the legislature.

All the above failings of Kejriwal undermine his claim of being a new age politician - one for the common people. They limit his ability to live up to the high hopes that people had on him. Kejriwal must realise that opportunism pays only in the short-term. He has a unique opportunity to bring about a fundamental transformation in the Indian polity, but standing with the likes of Sri Sri against the environment is not how that opportunity is going to be realised.