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.