My two cents to Modiji on the clean India Mission

Dear Modiji

My compliments to you on your aspirations for India of the future. You master the act of capturing imagination of the nation and your conviction is contagious. Though you do border on boastful deceit at times; I have started admiring your self-belief. It is indeed the sheer power of your undivided focus and self-belief that you cut the ranks in your own party to be the Prime ministerial candidate. No matter what kind of money you spent in your campaign and what all quid pro quo you allegedly did with corporates and the media houses; the thumping victory that you had in such a divided electoral is no mean feat.

Many people are writing about your Japan and US trip. I would dare not tread that path. I am not qualified. Likes of Shashi Tharoor do a superior job.

I feel urged to write about something closer to my heart. I would like to applaud your clean India mission. However, I must admit, your ministers like Ravishankar Prasad, Ramvilas Paswan look very comical with the brooms in their hands. They are holding the stick precariously and give an impression that they have never done the cleaning job; save the photo ops. You definitely know how to make a buzz. So much so that the original broom bearer also came out of his slumber and swept your backyard.

I must admit, on this occasion you did not measure up to my expectations. For your elections; you had state of art audio visual gadgetry; in US you address the Indian diaspora like a rock star with all the fanfare. Do you really intend to clean India of its filth with the humble broom?

It may be my cynicism; a conspiracy theory pops to my mind. I suspect that you have timed your clean India Mission with Delhi Elections in sight. This idea would have been pushed into your agenda by the PR agencies and the psephologists you have hired. It is no secret that symbolism plays a big role in swaying the mood of the voters. During BJP regime under Atal Bihari Vajpayee; BJP floated the buzz word “India shining”. To counter that in 2004; Congress think tanks came up with a question “Aam admi to kya mila?”  (What did the common man get?) This caption really rubbed the shine off “India shining” captions. Come 2012; Arvind Kejriwal announces formation of a new political party to clean the menace of all the old political parties like yours and Congress. The naming of the party took lots of time. After much deliberation and posturing; the name was made public; “Aam admi party”. Call it Political plagiarism. The name of the party struck the right cords of the masses. People forgot that Congress was the first to flirt with the Aam admi concept.

                Now is your turn. Did you pose with the broom to steal the symbol from Kejriwal? If the Delhi elections are announced; what will the AAP members do? They will come out on street with their brooms. With your master stroke; this act would look pale and repetitive. Your band of ministers have already posed with the brooms and people would get bored of seeing politicians with broom in their hands.

Forgive my dysfunctional mind Modiji. Too many conspiracy theories keep rumbling in my head.
Coming to clean India mission at its face value. It is a laudable effort. However; please bring the same modernism to the cleaning act that you bring to your election campaigns. I lived in Delhi for many years. Every morning, I would watch thousands of safai karmchari in utter disbelief. They come out on the streets and just push the dry leaves and dirt from one side to the other. Wind would again blow the heaps of dust and Delhi would always remain full of suspended pollutions.

Introduce mobile vacuum cleaners; water sprinklers to Delhi streets. Make lots of artificial water bodies on barren grounds. Let there be no exposed land. Either it should be covered with green patch or cemented or with water bodies. Introduce effective waste segregation, recycle and processing plants. If needed; introduce seeding and artificial rain during the dry summer months. Learn from countries like Israel how to create a clean and green ecosystem in desert. These things can be done with fraction of your rock concert addresses. If a country of 8 million can achieve it; definitely 1.25 billion can make that happen.

Measure the success of your clean India mission with the drop in suspended ppm in the air of big cities.

Kind Regards
Mukul

White Dwarf Arvind Kejriwal

Finally the much awaited results of Indian General Elections are out. The agility of world’s largest democracy has taken the world by awe. India shows the world how to decide the fate of a nation in most peaceful and perhaps most constructive way.

While the elections have sprung many surprises; none compares the fate of the newly formed AAP (Aam Admit Party) and its founder Mr. Arvind Kejriwal. To many, he was the youngest star born on the horizons of Indian Politics. His rise was unconventional and for a good time he gave all those veteran seasoned politicians a good run for their money. His guerilla warfare antics kept all on their toes.

The pinnacle of his popularity and success was the point where AAP made its debut in Delhi Assembly elections. Kejriwal humbled the Goliath in Congress and BJP to claim the top seat in Delhi Elections.

Kejriwal had two choices here.

Choice 1:
Toil as Delhi Chief Minister and attempt to fulfill all the utopian promises made to win the elections. Grow from strength to strength. Show sincerity in accomplishing the claims made in the state elections manifesto. At the same time; grow organically as a national party; perhaps focus on PHD (Punjab, Haryana, Delhi) in the upcoming National Elections.   

Choice 2:
Takht ya Taboot

Go all out for whole of India. Delhi Chief Minster seat is too small to fulfill the ambitions of Kejriwal. It is not possible to do justice to the seat of Chief Minister in Delhi and follow the national dream. Dump the CM seat and go back to the streets and take all the bigwigs head on. The risk is to lose whatever is at hand and the reward is the top post of the nation.

I am no political pundit or psephologist but what gives me liberty to make my own version of audacious analysis and hindsight is that probability of me being right or wrong is same as of those who are doing this for a living:-  50%.

We all know that Kejriwal led AAP went for Choice 2 and now we all know the consequences of it.
Let’s try to muse a bit on what would have happened if AAP went for the first choice.

Simulation, if AAP went for Choice 1;

Both Congress and BJP would be too happy to keep Kejriwal contained in Delhi region and would have conceded to a number of his eccentric demands. After Delhi results; there was a fear psychosis in BJP and Congress circles about Kejriwal’s ability to churn out unpredictable results in national elections.
Kejriwal could have shown off his moral and character superiority on BJP and Congress and perhaps would have won 20 odd seats in PHD region. There was a clear BJP wave this time. BJP had a set of staunch supporters who were adamant to vote him to power. AAP and Congress divided amongst themselves the votes of people who were anti BJP/Narendra Modi. If AAP had not fielded its candidates from all the constituencies; due to vote consolidation; perhaps UPA could have won 30-40 more seats at national level. In that scenario; BJP would have to seek alliances from other regional parties to form Government.

It is said that behind every successful man there is a woman and behind every unsuccessful man; there are two! Narendra Modi attributes his success to one woman; his mother. Imagine the situation where BJP did not have clear majority and Narendra Modi would have to depend on two women; Mamata Didi and Jayalalitha Amma! NDA might still have gone ahead and claimed the power at centre but it would have been a much humbled and limited in capacity.

I feel very thankful to Kejriwal that he went all out at national level. This allowed BJP to have clear majority. In my opinion; the growth vision of Congress and BJP are more or less the same. It is only the limitation of working under the control of irritant and demanding allies that slows down the progress and materialization of all the progressive projects.
I am sure; NaMo will do a sterling job in taking the growth of Indian nation to a new height. Congress could also have done similar things if they had clear mandate. Also job rotation is good as it helps flow of out of the box ideas that have incubated all this while. So, I expect more from BJP at this point of time.

Coming to the fate of rising star, Arvind Kejriwal; I am tempted to draw an analogy from a branch of Astronomy, Formation of stars. It is said that the new stars like our own sun undergo fusion reaction under the force of gravity where Hydrogen atoms combine to form Helium; releasing tremendous amount of energy in the process. When all the Hydrogen exhausts; under constant gravitational pull; the Helium atoms undergo further fusion to form Carbon atoms and thus goes the formation of heavier elements. This does not go on forever for all the stars!.  The big stars, which are 8 times or more massive to our own Sun explode in a spectacular Supernova. If the mass of the star is similar to our own sun; the most probable fate of the star is to become white dwarf. After all the Hydrogen has converted into Helium; the smaller stars swell into a red giant stage and eventually shed off the outer layers. What remains is the corpse of the star; a dim remnant where no Hydrogen fusion occurs. No fireworks come out of them.

Kejriwal attempted to explode like a Supernova but has shrunk to a white dwarf. He and his Aam Admi Party may remain there for a good long time but I do not expect any spectacular rise of his party again. The novelty of AAP antics has turned into predictability and an all-powerful Modi Sarkar will crush his road side agitations with brutal force if he tries them again. He is also expected to lose much of his red-giant layers of supporters as people have got disillusioned in masses and have their doubts in ability of this man to deliver anything tangible apart from dharnas.

So, I take the liberty to write off Mr. Arvind Kejriwal.
R.I.P AAP 

Should India continue with Caste based reservation?

Caste based differentiation of people in India remains an enigma and a tricky topic to deal with socio-politically. At times I get surprised by the simplistic view some of the westerners have about the evil of caste system in India. I understand their situation. It needs first-hand experience of living and growing in the Indian society intimately and mere fancy spiritual and adventurous sojourns do not offer the right insight into this complex social system of India.

A quick recap of the caste system:

Among the loosely coupled group of people in the south east Asia, who call themselves Hindus; the society is believed to be divided into 4 class of people or the 4 castes: The Brahmins, or the ones who derive their livelihood by rituals, worships, priesthood etc. acting as a channel of communication between human and divine; the Kshatriyas or the ruler and the warrior class; the Vysyas or business community and lastly, the shudras or the lowest rung of people meant for doing the menial jobs.

Though it is seen as a parallel to apartheid, the basis was different. People were categorized based on their profession rather than colour or creed. They had flexibility to change their caste by switching the profession; however, over the time the practice became degenerated, oppressive and disgusting. The lower caste people in India were oppressed for generations. They had little opportunity to excel and were out rightly downtrodden. They were considered untouchable; did not have access to temples, place of worship, public amenities and education.

Provisions for quota or Reservation System:

When India got independence and its constitution was written, many progressive leaders felt the need for upliftment and inclusiveness of this section of the society. It was felt necessary to make provisions for rapid progression of this society. It was agreed that this was a temporary measure and the need for reservation should be reviewed periodically and should be abolished in a period.

This led to the reservation system in India. Though it differs from state to state; roughly the reservations as they stand are:

Scheduled caste               = 15%
Scheduled Tribe               = 7.5%
Other Backward Caste     = 27% (This was added later on recommendations of Mandal Commission)

Apart from these broad categories which account for nearly 50% of the seats; there are some more provisions for Defense personnel and their dependents, women, minority communities like Sikhs, Muslims, Christians and now Jains. These quotas apply to all the educational institutions, government jobs, promotions in jobs and there are electoral seats reserved for people from reserved category to ensure representation in the parliament. From a reserved seat, only people from reserved category can contest elections. Scheduled Caste and Scheduled tribe people are also protected by very strict legislation against exploitation.

Though started for a noble cause; the Reservation system soon became a tool for the corrupt Populist politics in India. It has become clear now that the maximum benefit of reservation system is being reaped by the rich and affluent people of the reserved category. The poor people under reserved category are still not able to get suitably benefitted by the reservation provisions as those are consumed by more resourceful rich people under reserved categories. Reservation in technical higher education and promotion in jobs raises a serious question on negligence of merit in the field of technology, life sciences, research, governance and policy making. A very large number of people below poverty line also belong to the so called upper class castes. They remain deprived of these provisions of reservation for the weaker section of the society. This also creates lots of frustration and rebellion in the heart and mind of underprivileged upper caste poor people. The hatred and the chasm between castes remain wide open.

Arguments given in favour of continuing with the current provisions of caste based reservations:

Most of the political leaders from backward classes vehemently support the caste based reservations and are equivocal on when these provisions should be resolved or if they should be resolved at all.

Ram Vilas Paswan, president of Lok Janshakti Party who used to hold records in Guinness Book of World records for winning Parliamentary elections with largest vote margins is of the opinion that caste based discrimination prevailed in India for thousands of years so the caste based reservation should remain for a very,  very long time. The solution as per him is that all the boys and girls from upper caste should willingly marry the girls and boys from lower caste. This way, the social stigma of caste will be abolished and everyone will get similar benefits.

Mayawati, head of Bahujan samaj party and former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh has based her carrier on the dalit or oppressed card. She wants to be seen and remembered as the epitome of dalit empowerment. To prove a point, she loves to splurge the government money on commissioning hundreds of statues of her own self, public parks and gardens dedicated to herself; all carved out of tax payers’ money. She accepts donations and buys palatial houses for herself costing billions, likes to be weighed in gold at public ceremonies. During her regime, she built a road from her residence to the CM office which would be shut for public. The road used to be dusted and sprinkled with water before her trip to the CM office and the road would be hurriedly closed after her caravan of vehicles would have passed. She would move around with Z+ level of personal security with scores of commandoes; had half a dozen food tasters who would consume the food prepared for her before she would take the plunge. Her take on caste based reservation is not very clear. Lately she seems to agree in principle to consider the poor people from upper castes as well to be considered for the reservation benefits. The details are not clear.

Lalu Prasad, supremo of RJD has been a champion of Mandal Commission implementation and had been a hard player of caste based politics.

Congress Party has been speaking about this for some time and now the rhetoric is getting louder that they want to implement the caste based reservation to the private sector jobs as well. This step looks inspired by populist politics more than any larger ideology. Congress Party seems to be out of game in these upcoming national elections and they are struggling to make a last moment impact.

I am not very aware of what AAPs vision on caste based reservations is. Probably they are yet to include this on their election agenda.

What I make out:

“Moving on” is the need of the hour. Indian politicians and people of some communities should stop lobbying for things for personal advantage and should not differentiate between the needy people. We are a country of limited resources and unlimited asks; let us spare a thought for all the needy people irrespective of the castes and help them come out of it and participate in the all-inclusive growth of the nation. Seeing the political situation in the country; looks highly improbable in the near future. 

Remembering Jayaprakash Narayan and Ramdhari Singh Dinkar

It was a lazy Saturday some 25 years back. That time, I was studying in St. Michael’s high school in Patna. My mother was a teacher in a government school, Sir Ganesh Dutta Patliputra High School on Jagat Narayan road, Kadam kuan.

I used to have both days of the weekend (Saturday and Sunday) off while my mother would have to go to her school for half a day on Saturdays. This particular Saturday, my mother wanted to take a casual leave. The procedure for this was to write a formal leave application (in Hindi) to the principal of the school and submit at his office before start of the classes. My mother tore off a page from my notebook and scribbled her leave application. She read through, made some corrections and crushed the page into a ball and threw it. One by one she wasted 5 pages from my notebook before she prepared the final leave application and handed it to me to submit at her head master’s office. I liked making fun of my mother.

I took the application and read it aloud. It was written in chaste Hindi.

श्रीमान,

सेवा मे सविनय निवेदन है कि व्यक्तिगत कारण से आज मैं विद्यालय आने मे असमर्थ हूँ| अतः मैं प्रार्थना करती हूँ कि श्रीमान मेरे आक्स्मिक अवकाश के आवेदन को स्वीकार करके मुझे अनुग्रहित करें| आपकी इस अनुकंपा के लिए मैं सर्वदा श्रीमान की आभारी रहूंगी|

भवदीय

After spending sufficient time, laughing at my mother’s application, I took on my bicycle and rode to my mother’s school. I knocked at the door of the headmaster’s cabin and entered the room with best of my etiquette. The headmaster stared at me with his probing eyes. On realizing that I was son of one of his staff, he took interest in knowing a lot of things about me. Finally I was able to get off the hook and started my journey back.

I had gone just a short distance from the school in the narrow lane that I saw some people, sitting in a jeep waiving at me and asking to stop. My eyes went on the number plate of the jeep. The vehicle was from West Bengal. It was not long ago that I had learnt how to interpret the number plates of vehicles.

“Where is JP House?” An elderly Bengali man demanded of me from the jeep. “I don’t know.” Pat came my reply. My answer seemingly annoyed the elderly man. “You do not know Jayaprakash Narayan’s house? Do you know who was JP?”

“I do not know where his house is. Do not waste your time and ask someone else.” I replied wryly and moved on.

Of course I was aware of Jayaprakash. I have heard tits and bits about him. Ramdhari Singh Dinkar and Jayaprakash Narayan apparently were my two celebrity neighbors, a stone throw distance from each other. One was called Loknayak, leader of the masses, for some reason and the other was a rastrakavi, a national poet. The names were ubiquitous. JP Golambar, JP Narayan Aerodrome, JP Murti, Dinkar chauraha...

I must confess, I was more aware of Ramdhari Singh Dinkar than this JP guy. There was a nondescript statue of Dinkar on our school bus route. For years, our school bus would stop there to pick up students.
One day, suddenly we saw the statue getting some face-lift. They painted the statue with bright colours. A barricade was built around the statue and some plants were planted and a small manicured garden was built around.

Some of Dinkar’s poems were included in our Hindi text book. I loved to quote him in my Hindi essay assignments.

“क्षमा शोभती उस भुजंग को जिसके पास गरल हो; उसे क्या जो दंतहीन विष हीन विनीत सरल हो|”  

Forgiveness looks good on a snake with venom, not on those who are toothless, venom less and simple.

Coming back to Jayaprakash, I was vaguely aware of him being a national leader who was a freedom fighter and also opposed Indira Gandhi and started a popular agitation, JP Movement, against her corrupt government around 1975. Many of the non-Congress national leaders came out of JP movement.

Shambhu Sharan Lal, or just “Lal sir”, our history teacher was a staunch supporter of Congress party. We enjoyed his classes because he always talked as if he was giving first person account of incidents. Jayaprakash Narayan had inspired people to join hands against the corrupt government of Indira Gandhi. Indira Gandhi had a humiliating defeat and was sent to jail in 1977 on corruption charges.  - This was one of the most painful pieces of information that Lal Sir had to pass on to us as part of his teaching duties.

He would be quick to complement this with what happened after the Janta Party came to power.  They did not have leadership qualities. Morarji Desai and Chaudhry Charan Singh messed it all in internal tussle and JP went and told to Indira, “Daughter, you were better!”

“JP was a great visionary however his movement generated leaders with dubious records.” Lal sir would smile ear to ear telling us.

I stumbled upon this TV report on Jayaprakash Narayan recently.

http://aajtak.intoday.in/video/aandolan-on-aaj-tak-jp-movement-emergency-and-indias-second-freedom-1-753139.html

This helped me close my gaps in understanding about JP whose house I passed umpteen times. A man of vision, fearlessness and great grit. A man who brought the power blind Indira Gandhi to her toes with his vow of non-violent principled means.
I also came to understand why everyone from Anna Hazare to Baba Ramdev to Arvind Kejriwal prefer to have their protests at Ramlila Maidan in Delhi. It is this place that JP delivered his famous speech reciting his friend and neighbor, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar.

दो राह, समय के रथ का घर्घर नाद सुनो, सिंघासन खाली करो की जनता आती हैं ।

Hope this country has more Jayaprakash and Dinkar. It was very unfortunate of India that JP died of ill health soon after Janta Pary came to power. (some say he was poisioned while in jail in Chandhigarh during emergency)

When I see Lalu Prasad, one of the prodigy of JP movement, Sushil Modi, Ravishankar Prasad et al; I also understand what Lal sir meant by JP having unworthy inheritors. Nitish Kumar, the current CM of Bihar also came out of JP movement and he still gives lots of hope.

AAP –From Doubt to Disappointment to Disgust

Swearing in ceremony of Arvind Kejriwal left me spellbound. His song from the podium gave me goose bumps. It felt like witnessing a history in the making. I could identify myself with him. Here was one amongst us; a middleclass intellectual young man who showed the courage and grit to take on the bigwigs of dirty Indian Politics.  

In all honesty, I had my quota of criticism and cynicism about him all along and had been speaking my mind in my blogs for some time now. Nonetheless I admired his grit; his focus and fearlessness. There was a wishful part of me which wanted to give him all the benefits of doubts. I hoped to be proven wrong. I secretly enjoyed when my “die-hard Kejriwal fan” friends and colleagues picked on me for my cynicism. I enjoyed getting bashed up as I always wished to see Kejriwal succeed in his mission.

The Doubts crept in:
For a week, Kejriwal and his ministers used shared auto / public transport to come to office. Then came the news of them getting Toyota Innova cars. These cars are priced at around 10-15 lakh rupees in India. “They will not have the red beacons”, clarified the CM. Mr. AK then tried to sneak into a 10 room bungalow in central Delhi. “Only 5 rooms for my family and 5 rooms for my office work. Compare this with lavishness of ex CM’s house” AK spoke with his assuring poker face. “Shiela must be using her bungalow for running a massage parlor, aerobics classes and gourmet restaurants.” He wanted us to believe. Somehow, his supporters were not convinced. True to his style; AAP asked people to send SMS and his wish to move in the bungalow was declined by his supporters. Then there were water and electricity subsidies which drew flacks.

                Honestly, these were not big issues for me. Ministers are entitled to accommodation, conveyance, a decent salary to be able to discharge their duties and also deserve to have a level of comfort for the services they provide. If Mahatma Gandhi was alive today, even he would have approved of these amenities. I saw the hypocrisy and took this more as a learning curve. “We have given so many chance to corrupt people. Let’s give some time to mature to honest people.” I like many others chose to ignore these comical circumstances and looked forward to more substantial actions from them.

Then came the Disappointment

At the stroke of a pen, Kejriwal reverts the ruling of FDI in retail sector in NCT. This was a ruling duly passed by the legislative council after much debate. For a trivial thing like shifting to the chief ministerial bungalow, he went for referendum and tweets and SMS; for FDI, he did not feel any need to debate.

Now there are strong for and against lobbies for FDI in retail sector and it can be an endless debate; here is my take on this:

We live in a world of reciprocity. If US expel an Indian diplomat; we feel obliged to send two of theirs back (sans cavity search). Mr. Kejriwal not necessarily came to power by support of poor people but by aspiring middle class youth; many of whom are connected to IT. IT is our biggest foreign export. If other countries take a cue from this and start refusing to do business with Indian IT companies, what should we do? Protectionism beyond a point is highly counterproductive. If Indian farmers were in a happy state; probably there was not much need to try anything different. Today hundreds of farmers in rural area commit suicide; live on less than 1 Dollar per day in spite of no FDI in retail. Will their situation further deteriorate?  Farmers in India are the exploited lot. I do not see any way the Walmarts and Tescos or for that matter our own Reliance and Tata paying lesser price to farmers than the unorganized sector full of middlemen and Kiranawallahas. Farmers will get better price; consumers will get cheaper products and better quality due to competition.

No process or option is fool proof. No matter what we choose; we need to have regulations, quality control and checks. It is much easier to implement all the checks on organized sector than the kirana owners.
One of the arguments given is that the number of people employed in retail sector will fall drastically if big players come in. That can be a blessing in disguise. In India, we not only suffer from unemployement but also hidden unemployment. A piece of land can be tilled effectively by 1 person but 4 brothers till the same land as they do not take the effort to try to do something else. If we get the flab out of retail sector; they can contribute elsewhere in the economy.

Now the Disgust!

My worst fear came true. In his obsession to come to power at any cost; Arvind did not miss a single opportunity to attack the then Government of Shiela Dixit. He held her responsible for rapes in the city, held candle vigil and felt it justified to derive all the political mileage out of these sorry and unfortunate incidents.

Now, this inevitable social vice has surfaced again in Delhi. A Danish national got raped at knife point. I expected Kejriwal and his team to have the spine to apologize and take moral responsibility and reflect on their act of brandishing the previous government and settling using this for political mileage.

Arvind and his team are on the back foot and they are circumventing the question. Sad to see how quickly the lust for power can erode our conscience and moral standing. Perhaps this was the reason for which Anna Hazare was proscribing to join the seat of power and work as a social activist.

AAP and Hype Cycle

AAP and the Hype Cycle

Hype  cycle is a branded graphical tool developed and used by IT research firm Gartner,  representing the maturity, adoption and social application of specific technologies. It is amazing to see how beautifully this Hype cycle curve fits in most of the phenomena of day-to-day life.

Basically Hype cycle talks about 5 phases of any new product/technology that is launched:

1.       Technology Trigger: A potential technology breakthrough kicks things off. Early proof-of-concept stories and media interest trigger significant publicity. Often no usable products exist and commercial viability is unproven.

2.       Peak of Inflated Expectations: Early publicity produces a number of success stories—often accompanied by scores of failures. Some companies take action; many do not.

3.       Trough of Disillusionment: Interest wanes as experiments and implementations fail to deliver. Producers of the technology shake out or fail. Investments continue only if the surviving providers improve their products to the satisfaction of early adopters.

4.       Slope of Enlightenment: More instances of how the technology can benefit the enterprise start to crystallize and become more widely understood. Second- and third-generation products appear from technology providers. More enterprises fund pilots; conservative companies remain cautious.

5.       Plateau of Productivity: Mainstream adoption starts to take off. Criteria for assessing provider viability are more clearly defined. The technology’s broad market applicability and relevance are clearly paying off.

Let’s map these 5 phases to rise of AAP (Aam Admi Party)

1.       Mass Movement Trigger: Kejriwal and the team associated with the movement worked on a number of groundbreaking initiatives; Right to Information Act; Jan Lokpal Bill, Mohalla Sabha and Referendum participation of citizens in decision making process for welfare of the locality.

2.       Peak of Inflated Expectations: Kejriwal makes the sensational announcement of forming the AAP and contest Delhi elections. Promised to bring the electricity bills down to a fraction; free water; abolish VIP culture; no red beacons, no government cars or bungalow for the ministers, use of public transport, no security for the ministers, charge sheet all the corrupt politicians and government employees, upliftment of governance, infrastructure of NCT, bring the crime down, everything in Delhi to be hunky dory, every citizen to feel empowered and on sky 9 under the rule of Kejriwal.

3.       Trough of Disillusionment:  Slowly the sheen of promises made by AAP starts wearing off.  Kejriwal  gets judged and stopped by his own set high standards to move to a decent Chief Minister bungalow. His ministers get Toyota cars minus red beacon. The announcement of electricity and water rates looked more like rejig and misleading jugglery of numbers with little net benefit to the citizens. Refusal of apparent security cover by AAP members indirectly adds 10 times more burden on police to arrange sheath security. Rakhi Birlan added to confusion by making noise about her car being attacked by opposition, only to discover that it was just a cricket ball which came in the way unintentionally. Kejriwal asks hurriedly to withdraw the case. People feel disappointed that suddenly Kejriwal and his side kick Viswas stopped their relentless rant against the corrupt politicians (Rahul baba , Shiela Dixit, Vijay Goel and others) whom they vowed to bring to books after coming to power. Night shelter in 5 unused bus for homeless people was a noble gesture but not up to the expectations people had formed of AAP.
CItizens nervously wait to see something more tangible; more radical than this. The chaos at the first junta durbar set up by Kejriwal did not help the cause either. Critics start raising their head. Murmurs get louder and AAP feels the heat of public glare and scrutiny.  Helplessly they realize how the opposition takes them to task for every statement they make. Embarrassingly Kejriwal has to refute Prashant Bhushan’s statement on Kashmir security and his side kick Kumar Vishwas had to apologize for his insensitive remark about Muslims 8 years ago!
Kejrival and his team learn with pain that now they also need to apologize for their actions and look for covers. Till this time, they only knew how to attack. They felt the whole world owed them an answer and they had birth right to make any allegation on any public figure.

However, this is the most important juncture for AAP and can be a game changer.It is to be seen if Kejrival and AAP learn their lessons and get through the Slope of Enlightenment and Plateau of Productivity. Public voted them to power as they gave the hope of cleaning the system; bring effective governance and sustainable growth, prosperity and security to the common man. They have a tight timeline and formidable competition in Narendra Modi and BJP. One wrong move and you are out of the equation. The common man has always been impressionable. For starters, Kejriwal and his team succeeded to make the right first impression but if they do not rise through the next 2 phases of Hype cycle; they might get reduced to another political party.