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.

Solution to the acute water shortage in India

Since our childhood we have been warned of the ever depleting natural resources and most importantly drinking water. Unplanned urbanization; exploding population and consumerism are certainly taking their toll. I remember my early childhood in Patna, taking cloth bags or jhola to the local grocery shops for buying vegetables, sugar, salt, masala and biscuits were the norm rather than an ecological fad. The provisions would be weighed and packed in paper bags made from old newspaper and books. Polythene was unheard of and unseen till some point in my growing up when it just became ubiquitous.
We would sell our old newspaper, books, plastic bottles, glass jars, nonfunctioning tube-lights and electric bulbs to scavenger boys who would collect the old articles door to door. Tight fitting piece of clothing would be passed on to the younger lot in the family; old clothes would be used as sleeping suits and finally would be spoilt and torn apart during Holi, the festival of colours. The torn clothes would serve as mop for a very long time in the household. We recycled everything. I would have taken my old rubber slippers to the cobbler at least 5 times before discarding them. Same would be true for my shoes.
These extreme conservation practices were not necessarily out of our consciousness about the environment; love for our mother earth or any of those traits from responsible citizen charter but affordability. Average household could not afford to be wasteful with their limited means. Thanks to the liberalization and capitalism; households which once used to be content with a gross income of 5000 rupees per month, find it a struggle to manage with an income of 5000 rupees per day!
We call it inflation; we say that the value for money has gone down; the purchasing power of rupee has gone south. We were able to buy a lot in those good old days. All this is true along with the fact that if I start having a lifestyle that I had in my childhood; I would probably be able to live on a tenth of my monthly expenditures.
There is another aspect to it. If I stop longing for those gadgets; changing that watch, upgrading that smartphone; going for bigger, sleeker HD Flat screen TV  or changing furniture and upholstery of my house every six months; probably the big companies will go into slump; they will bring down the markets; economy will fall apart; people employed in these luxury industries would lose employment; They will pull out India’s name from BRICS; we will be out of the league of progressive countries. Probably America and China will attack India vent out their frustration and disgust for India being such a pull-down. We pay the price of modernization. Capitalism looks like riding a running lion with no way to step down.
Anyways; the purpose of me writing this blog is a question that sprung in my mind while watching these news channels and knowing of the worsening water crisis we are facing in most of the big cities in India. Mainly the two cities close to my heart; Delhi and Bengaluru.
Is the water crisis really that hard to crack? We are surrounded on 3 sides by water still we do not have access to portable water.  I read reports about new economic corridors being built between Mumbai and Delhi. Is it not possible that we lay big water pipeline along Mumbai-Delhi highway? It should be something like the oil pipelines we lay for transporting oil; albeit much cheaper and simple. Pump the sea water from Mumbai in this pipe all the way to Delhi! Identify naturally occurring rocky reservoirs on the way and reinforce them appropriately so that they can be used for storing water. Fill all these open tanks and lakes on the way from Mumbai to Delhi. This should result in lots of evaporation of the sea water filled in lakes and tanks and hopefully should increase the rainfall in the area. The rain water would be fresh distilled water and not salty. This will increase the water table in the area and also increase the green cover. Spread these water pipes to the deserts of Rajasthan. Have very robust arrangement for rain harvesting and make sure that the rain water doesn’t drain back in the sea water containing lakes. These sea water reservoirs should be land locked like Dead sea and should not have any connection with water source. In 5-10 years of time; when our rain harvested tanks get filled with sweet water; the sea water reservoirs can be allowed to be emptied by evaporation (and no replenishment by pumping sea water). We probably would be able to extract the salt by scrapping the bottom of these reservoirs commercially.
If the Dutch can claim land from sea by building dykes; why cannot we reclaim fertile land and forests from Thar desert?
This could be applied to Bangalore with much less effort. Bangalore is just 150 km from Sea! And maybe we will put an end to the acute fresh water crisis that India is facing for good. It might have a ROI period of 30 years; but this should definetly deliver.

Tell me guys am I missing a point here?