Odd-even plan a success. Kejriwal centrestages pollution and how!
Kejriwal's surprise announcement of the odd-even scheme was met with much scepticism and even opposition from the vocal middle class which loves to drive its own car. A range of objections, from examples of failures of the scheme to Indian citizens penchant for breaking rules to our law-enforcers lack of capacity to enforce rule, were put forth to point out how the scheme was doomed to fail.
Notwithstanding all these doomsayers, the Delhi chief minister pressed ahead, incorporating changes to address certain valid criticisms, reaching out to multiple stakeholders, putting his party machinery at work to create awareness and mass support. He also, ultimately, left it for the people to decide the fate of the scheme by pointing out that if people didn't cooperate in large number, the scheme will fail and be withdrawn.
These steps appear to have yielded a positive result with the odd-even scheme apparently working on its inaugural date. There are reports of people voluntarily cooperating with the scheme. Kejriwal's tryst with odd-even policy and its odd success (though it's still too early to say conclusively) is a good exemplar of his style of governance.
Here's a few important points about Kejriwal's governance, politics and this odd-even scheme experiment:
Who's afraid to take risk? Not Kejriwal
Indian governance is too often a victim of policymakers being stuck in the past. We are too afraid to do things differently even if we don't like the outcome of our past ways. Kejriwal is a welcome change from this class of risk-averse politicans and officials. He is a gambler - both in his style of politics and governance. He is never afraid to take a risk. Infact, because his core constituency comprises of people fed up with the ways of the establishment, Kejriwal is eager to break from the past.
He displayed this in adopting the odd-even scheme, something traditional indian politicians would never dream of due to fear of the vocal middle class. This is also on display in him putting education and health at the centrestage of his governance agenda.
Governance through people's partnership
Kejriwal often points out that making people partners in governance is necessary for success of government. In the case of odd-even policy too, he eagerly sought people's advice, addressed their criticism and gave importance to creating mass awareness and making people take ownership of the success of the scheme.
He embraced people and they embraced him back. This style of bringing people on board involves making people as equal stakeholders in any political decision. It is based on mutual respect, and not looking down on people with suspicion. This is an extremely valuable change in way of governance.
Modern India was designed as a colonial state, distrusting of the populace and tended to suspect the very people it was to govern (because the state's role then was exploitation of the people). Despite becoming independent, India's state machinery continues to be suspicious of the people it is supposed to serve.
It also looks down upon the common man. This suspicion and sense of superiority and entitlement among government employees is hampering state's ability to deliver. Many government schemes fail due to non cooperation from people or the excessive role of bureaucracy or over centralisation. All these vices are related to the inability to treat people as citizens, and not subjects. India can dramatically improve its governance by the governments embracing people.
Brought pollution to centrestage of discussion
The greater success of Kejriwal's experiment with the odd-even policy is that it brought pollution to the centrestage of discussion. Delhi has had a terrible pollution problem for quite some time now but not much has been done about it due to lack of political will. By taking an action that affected the vocal middle class, Kejriwal ended this conspirational silence about Delhi's pollution problem. Now it has become an important public issue and the pressure on the government to tackle the menace of pollution is more.
This will lead to greater steps for curbing pollution, which is choking Delhi. This can be the beginning of the end of chronic pollution in Delhi as it is not an insurmountable problem but it has become so big only due to apathy of public policy.
Brilliant political move
The reduced congestion on roads due to the scheme is instantly visible, unlike the results of most government action which takes a long time to have any affect. So through the success of this scheme the government can instantly win much applause. Thus it is converting the challenge of pollution into an opportunity to provide solution.
The expected negative political fall out of the move was, anyway, not much as only a small portion of Delhi, which own cars, was affected and even it recognises the need to curb road congestion and reduce pollution.
The experiment's success can create demand for its continuation in Delhi (then host of other challenges will have to be addressed-like getting a permanent fleet of buses and challenge of people buying a second car) and its initiation in other metros too. This can thus change our political apathy towards transport and pollution woes at a stage larger than Delhi.
Thus the Kejriwal style of governance and his tryst with odd-even scheme holds out important lessons for Indian policymakers. Experimenting, risk taking, people's participation, opportunities in addressing hitherto overlooked problems and embracing people are all attributes that need to be seen more from the Indian State too.
Kejriwal's small step in this direction, one hopes, is only the first step in this long journey to make India capable of delivering on the many aspirations of its people.