Anyone in politics who chooses to take on the police in their own country could be said to be in for a rough ride – perhaps doubly so in a place such as India, where regional variations in the way those who make the laws and those who are supposed to uphold them interact, often resulting in fractious relations between governments and civil servants. Arvind Kejriwal, however, is undeterred and Delhi's residents are struggling with whether to view him as a champion of freedom for the people, or simply an anarchist bent on stirring up unnecessary animosity in a city where, unlike the rest of the country, the police report directly to the home ministry rather than the state government.
As the northern India capital's recently appointed first minister, Kejriwal has wasted no time in making his mark. He has captured the minds and hearts of Delhi's poor and middle classes who are evidently fed up with corruption and substandard government practices. He has offered people free water, offered to drastically reduce their electricity bills and offered to defend the rights of women, all within just a few weeks of assuming office.
With a name like Aam Aadmi (it translates as "common man"), his political party, also known as the AAP and only founded in 2012, was always going to court favour with the poor and working class of Delhi, where nearly 18 million people reside, half of whom, according to a 2012 report in The Times of India, live in slums without electricity or sanitation. It isn't just abject poverty that Delhi has to contend with, either, as more than 15 per cent of crimes against women in Indian cities are committed there, something that has put the entire country under international scrutiny in recent months.
The AAP took charge in late-December, following a popular anti-corruption campaign that beat his predecessor, Sheila Dikshit, and Kejriwal has seized upon the current furore surrounding sex (and other) crimes against women by leading protests against the police who, he claims, he is powerless to control to improve the city's law and order. And, to bring his plight to the attention of the country and the world at large, on Monday he led a sit-down protest staged at a roundabout at Krishi Bhavan in the city centre. After initially calling for supporters to stay away, he relented and many flocked to join him at the improbable location. He also called upon honest police officers to support him and pandemonium ensued.
The protest followed Kejriwal's unheeded demands for five police officers to be suspended from duty and for the force as a whole to begin reporting to the government. The previous week, officers had arrested a number of Africans, including women, in the southern part of Delhi, who it was claimed had been dealing in narcotics. None were found and four women filed complaints about the arrests and the accompanying cavity searches and beatings. For a politician trying to protect women in Delhi, this was akin to waving a red rag in front of a bull.
Despite his claims that he'd quite willingly disrupt the country's Republic Day celebrations this coming Sunday, Kejriwal called off the protest on Tuesday night. After having spent a cold and exceedingly rough night sleeping on the road, he was hospitalised with severe lung congestion and had been seen violently coughing throughout the protest.
His physical condition, though, was not the reason for Kejriwal calling a halt to the strike – the official line was that it was due to his demands being met and the lieutenant governor, Najeeb Jung, promising that an inquiry would be fast-tracked against the implicated officers.
"This is a victory of Delhi," Kejriwal said at the time. "If any woman in Delhi is attacked then we will not sit quietly." Earlier in the week, when he initially sat down at the aforementioned roundabout, he had told the UK's Independent newspaper that he was, as had been claimed by his detractors, "an anarchist", but that he was prepared to do whatever it took to change Delhi for the better.
Kejriwal is 45 years old, relatively youthful for a senior politician. He is a vegetarian, married to Sunita (who works for the Indian Revenue Service, where he also used to be employed) and has two children – a daughter and a son. He was born into a well-educated family that was financially well heeled – his father, Gobind, was an electrical engineer. Most of his youth was spent in northern towns. Following his father's footsteps, he studied engineering (albeit the mechanical variety) at the famed Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur and in 1989 he started working for Tata Steel – an Indian institution if ever there was one.
While at Tata he took a leave of absence to study for the Civil Services Examination – a must for recruitment into India's civil service – and he quit working for the steel giant in 1992. After that time he travelled to Calcutta and spent time at the Ramakrishna Mission, a philanthropic organisation founded in 1897 which carries out relief work in disaster areas, as well as work in education, tribal management and health care.
In 1995 he joined the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) and, in 2000, was granted two years' paid leave to pursue further higher education. When he eventually returned in 2003, he assumed office as joint commissioner of income tax in New Delhi but fell foul of the government when he left that post in February 2006. One of the conditions of his unpaid leave, it was claimed, was that he would stay in the IRS for at least three years after returning or he'd be liable to repay the salary he'd taken while studying. The problem for Kejriwal was that, within those three years, he had taken 18 months of unpaid leave and the resultant legal wranglings were only settled in 2011 after he repaid the money with loans from friends.
Kejriwal had fought the government's ruling, claiming it was an attempt to discredit him due to his involvement with the IAC (India Against Corruption) movement and it was obvious to all that he was keen to fight for the common people. While at the IRS he helped found Parivartan, a movement designed to help residents with their taxes and food rations and, in December 2006, he set up the Public Cause Research Foundation. He also fought corruption cases against public utility bodies as well as the government – never afraid to cause waves or unsettle the establishment.
Inevitably he entered the political fray and, in November 2012, he established the AAP. He claimed it was a logical step if he was to tackle the corruption that has blighted India for decades and, in the 2013 Delhi election, the AAP won 28 of the 70 available seats, finishing in second place, and announced it intended to form a minority government in the hung parliament.
For a man to run his government from a city centre roundabout takes some doing but Arvind Kejriwal is on a mission and appears to be unfazed by his detractors or the authorities he is taking a stand against. India's general election is just around the corner and political commentators seem to at least agree on one thing: that Kejriwal could end up changing the entire landscape of his country's government. India's worn down, poverty stricken masses, its vulnerable women and its middle classes have a new champion and he's busy shaking the tree. What falls out of it could result in the biggest, most positive and far reaching changes in the country's history. Watch this space.
khackett@thenational.ae
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