Knowing our PM candidates : Mr. Arvind Kejriwal (Part -1)

As the election season is approaching, it becomes our duty as the citizen of this country to elect the best and most suited candidate to be our next PM (Prime Minister). For this, we have to take a considerate decision, based on the profiles of the candidates in contention for the race. So, in the next 4-5 days, we will be looking at the profiles of Mr. Arvind Kejriwal, Mr. Narendra Modi, and Mr. Rahul Gandhi in the alphabetical order. So, let’s start with Mr. Kejriwal first.



Profile of Arvind Kejriwal


Name -  Mr. Arvind Kejrwial

Age – 45 years

Birth Place – He was born in Siwani, Bhiwani district of Haryana on 16^th August, 1968.


Current position -

He is one of the prominent leaders and the face of the Aam Aadmi Party. It is evident from his work that he is the acting president of AAP but that has never been announced officially.


Educational Qualification -

Mr. Kejriwal did his graduation from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, in mechanical engineering (batch 1985-1989).

He pursued his higher education from Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration where he was given the training for the administration work of a civil servant.



Work Experience -

Mr. Kejriwal, after completing his engineering from IIT kharagpur, joined TATA steel in 1989 and was posted in Jamshedpur. After working there for 3 years, he resigned from that job to start preparing for the civil services.


From 1992-95, apart from preparing for the civil services, he spent some quality and enriching time at the Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of charity in Kolkata, Ramakrishna Mission in the north east and Nehru Yuva Kendra. According to Mr. Kejriwal, the time spent by him at the Ramakrishna Mission and Nehru Yuva Kendra was the path-breaking moment of his life. He finally joined IRS (Indian Revenue Services) in 1995 after qualifying through civil service examinations.


He worked in the income tax department till 2000 during which he co-founded an NGO named, Parivartan, in 1999 to tackle issues related with corruption and ensure transparent accountable governance.


In 2000, he took 2 years of paid leave from his office to pursue higher studies with a contract of rejoining the office to work for atleast next 3 years.


He had worked only for 18 months after rejoining the office and took 18 months of unpaid leave, which resulted in income tax department filing a case against Mr. kejriwal for breaching the contract. He finally resigned in 2006 from the office.



Achievements -

RTI (Right to Information) Act, 2005 -

Mr. Kejriwal spearheaded an awareness campaign for RTI across India. He, along with others, aggressively campaigned for the RTI act to be enacted across India. This finally paved the way for the enactment of the Right to Information act, 2005.


In 2006, Mr. Kejriwal was awarded with "Ramon Magsaysay Award for emergent leadership" for his involvement in spearheading the awareness campaign for RTI.


In December 2006, Kejriwal along with Manish Sisodia and Abhinandan Sekhri started Public Cause Research Foundation, which works for promoting better local self-governance and RTI related campaigns.


Jan Lokpal Bill -

Mr. Arvind Kejriwal along with Prashant Bhushan, Shanti Bhushan, Santosh Hegde and Kiran Bedi drafted Jan Lokpal Bill. As the bill was edited and revised time to time after wide public consultations, it was known as Jan Lokpal Bill i.e. People’s Lokpal bill. Though Anna Hazare was the leader of the movement for Jan Lokpal, Arvind Kejriwal is regarded as the architect behind the movement.



Political career -


In 2012, Mr. Kejriwal started his own political party named, “AAP” (Aam Aadmi Party) to fight against corruption and hence pave the way for Jan Lokpal Bill. The party got unprecedented success in the 2013 Delhi State Election with Mr. Kejriwal becoming the chief minister of the state for 49 days by taking the outside support from the congress party.
Criticism -

One of the regular criticisms that Mr. Kejriwal faces is his inclination towards populist measures. Whether, it was the promise of reducing the electricity prices by half before the Delhi state elections or the promise of giving free water, these populist promises seem too unrealistic and against economy for a few.


Disclaimer : If you find any discrepancies in the above content, please feel free to mail me at vivek05rock@gmail.com.

Inclusive growth: A myth in India

India, in the last decade, has been the 2^nd fastest growing nation after china. Its economy grew by an average of 7.4% per annum. But, despite registering impressive growth performance over a period of ten years, India still remains an impoverished and poverty-stricken nation. One-third of the counties population struggle everyday to even earn food to survive, leave aside the access to education, health and other basic necessities of life. It is appalling that India stands at 141^st place out of 169 countries in UN’s Human Development Index report released in 2013, even behind some of the third world African countries. So, why India hasn’t been able to improve the living conditions for the people in rural areas despite recording great growth numbers on papers?


The answer to this is very simple. India, with all its clamouring about impressive growth numbers, hasn’t focused on “inclusive growth”. Inclusive growth as a basic concept focuses on equitable sharing of the benefits of the economic growth so that each and every section of the society, irrespective of its economic conditions, gets its benefits. This sadly hasn’t happened in India. Most of the development has been confined only to metros and urban areas whereas rural areas have been left behind, sulking in poverty and abjection. This inequitable distribution of the benefits has resulted in disparity of income as rich have become richer and poor have become poorer. This kind of economic disparity is hazardous as it can hamper the long term growth prospects of a nation. Huge economic inequalities also result in high corruption and plutocracy, the rule by wealthy.


The failure in achieving inclusive growth has started to haunt India as most of its rural development centric policies have begun to fail because of the ineffective implementation and huge corruption by the wealthy and powerful, thus depriving poor of the basic necessities and thereby, letting them die in poverty. Failure of the Bharat nirman Yojana, a scheme started by the govt. of India, is a perfect example of it.


Overall development of a nation can happen only when each section of the society prospers and gets chances to grow. Focusing on the growth in urban and metros only won’t make India a better place to live. It would only help upper-middle class, not the poor. It’s the interior underdeveloped regions where we have to shift our focus on. Giving poor more opportunities would improve their quality of life, which in turn would boost India’s economic growth. Apart from just creating policies and allocating funds for them, we need to ensure that policies are better implemented and their benefits are reaching to the poor. Education, health, job creation remain the areas of attention. Inclusive growth, taking everyone together is the way forward.

Right to education Act enacted on paper, but where is the implementation

When Right to Education (RTE) Act was enacted with much fanfare in 2010, it seemed for some time that India is heading towards a moment that will turn out to be the path-breaking moment in India’s history. But, all those illusions got swashed away within a year of its enactment. The act, which was passed initially with the envision of constitutionally conferring the right to education to all the children between 6 to 14 years of age irrespective of their economic background, has failed miserably in the last 4 years since it has been penned down and voted-in in the parliament. The act, which was expected to drastically improve the literacy rate in the country by allowing children from weaker section of the society to have free access to education and controlling the drop-out rates from the elementary schools, hasn’t been able to live up to the expectations.



So, the first question which immediately comes to our mind is that why has the act failed in delivering the desired results/output. Yes, the answer is simple: ineffective implementation of the act.  But, we need to dig further into it to find the valid reasoning behind the ineffective implementation. One of the prominent reasons which come out is the government’s lack of efforts in improving the quality of education given in govt. and govt. sponsored schools. There has been literally no emphasis on the quality of education meted out to the students in these govt. schools. Further, hiring of incompetent and below standard faculty and teachers and no regular monitoring of their work by an institutional body have been cited as the reasons for the abysmal standard of education in govt. schools.



  The act also mandated that 25% of the seats in the private schools must be reserved for the students coming from financially weaker sections of the society and the expense of all those students would be borne out by the government. But, the lack of clarity on the issue between the govt. and the schools on how and when the schools would be paid back prevented many schools from reserving the seats. And, those that reserved seats last year still haven’t been reimbursed, which has made schools more apprehensive of the functionality of the whole process. The govt. needs to understand that it’s not the duty of private schools only to provide good quality education. Public schools need to function in tandem to achieve the larger goal. On the other hand, the lack of proper information and guidance for the parents about the act haven’t helped the cause either.

The act also targeted at reducing child labour and preventing children from turning into street beggars by putting them into a process of schooling. But, the desired penetration in these matters hasn’t been achieved as child labour and child beggars are still very much a grim reality in the society. The essence of the RTE act has been lost in these 4 years of transition. The govt. needs to come out with a much clear and comprehensive process to tackle these issues. Proper guidelines on reimbursements to private schools, establishing of help centres for trouble shooting the queries of the parents regarding the act, collaborating with various NGO’s to get children out of the vicious circle of child labouring and begging, hiring competent and qualified faculty for the govt. schools. These are just some of the steps which can give a good head start for proper implementation of the act in coming years. Hope it happens as “education” has the power to change the phase of this nation.

32 Rs (0.5 dollars) a day : Not sufficient enough to survive

32 Rupees (0.5 dollars) a day per person, that’s India’s poverty line benchmark for Urban areas. Yes, you heard it right, that’s the value which is used by the govt. of India to determine and decide who is poor in India and who is not. The benchmark reduces even further to 28 Rupees a day per person for the people living in rural areas. These are the figures and benchmarks released by the planning commission of India, which consists of highly educated scholars and experts, after considerable deliberations and discussions. But even despite the sound professional dexterity and knowledge of the members of planning commission of India, these poverty line benchmarks don’t look plausible in reality.



The poverty line benchmarks released by the planning commission of India for urban and rural areas seem to be long drawn away from the existing reality on grounds. While these nonsensical and irrational benchmarks don’t mean anything to poor people who are constantly suffering being deprived of the basic necessities of life, the appalling ignorance of the existing realities by the govt. adds to the travesties and sufferings of the poor. These figures are plain numbers, even going to an extent of mocking their penurious state of conditions. The govt. might pat its back for reducing poverty to 21.46% of the population in 2012-13 from 37.47% in 2004-05 but the real picture is completely opposite of what is being portrayed and shown. Constant depreciation of rupee and high inflation have led to the decline of the purchasing power of rupee in the domestic market. Purchasing power of any currency tells us about how much more money does a consumer need to spend to buy a particular product in the market as compared to the purchase of the same product in the previous years. With considerable decline in the purchasing power of rupee in the last 20 years, people are forced to shed out more money to purchase products of basic needs like food grains, water, electricity. The planning commission of India should have raised poverty line benchmark considering these factors to provide a proper reflection of the effects of inflation but that didn’t happen.


Also, 28 or 32 Rs aren’t even enough to purchase food for a person, so what about the health, education and other basic needs. Planning commission should also consider providing these necessary basic services to people while calculating poverty line benchmarks. India's poverty line benchmark is around 0.5 dollars which is 2/3 rd less than the international poverty line benchmark of 1.5 dollars a day per person. Hence, it is necessary and incumbent upon the govt. and planning commission to reconsider their process and method used in calculating these benchmarks to help poor get the benefits of being below the poverty line. The concept of giving benefits to the people lying below the poverty line came into picture to help the extremely backward and poor section of the society. Right now, with India’s absurd poverty line benchmarks, many needy poor people are missing out on these benefits, thereby making it difficult for them to survive. We hope that govt. wakes up from its slumber and some sanity prevails.

From a british colony to world’s largest democracy : the journey is still unfinished

When India became independent in 1947 from the realms of the traumatizing British rule, it became officially one of the most diverse nations on the planet considering the number of people that came together at that time belonging from different religions, castes and regions to form an incredible nation called “India”. Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians came together to form what turned out to be the world’s largest democracy. That amalgamation of people from different religions gave India a “tag on the paper” of being the most democratic and culturally diverse country where people are not differentiated on the basis of religion. Today, India is seen as the world’s largest democracy where people from different communities live together amicably.


However, the reality on the ground is completely opposite. India, in the last 6 decades since its independence, has seen countless number of communal riots. India’s glorious history has been marred by bloodshed with innocent people being butchered, women brutally raped, and children lacerated to soothe the communal ego of a few morons. Hundreds and thousands of people have died in these communal riots for no reason. Regionality has also created communal differences among people and recent telengana issue bears absolute testimony to it. People have suffered and emotionally burnt themselves in these communal violences whereas our appalling political system has enjoyed this in their unjustified lust for power. Politicians have long used these communal differences to cumulate their vote-bank. Instead of diverting their attention on the development of the nation as a whole, they were busy in playing secular vs communal card to widen their vote base and earn some cheap political mileage. This has happened over and over again during each and every election over the last 60 years and it still continues to happen. This all has led to a vicious type of governance, which is largely motivated with creating divide in the society on the basis of religion, instead of concentrating on providing a pro-development governance. All of this has further worsened the situation for India on the democratic front and adversely effected the economic development of the country as the focus of our politicians have been more on instigating the feelings of the people rather than helping India and its people to prosper in economic terms.


 Why is it that even after 66 years of our independence, we haven’t been able to inculcate a feeling of oneness and togetherness in 1.25 billion people that live in a country known as “India”. Why is that we still fight over religion issues and are always ready to cut throats of people over minor theological differences. Why the great democracy of India which we so much clamour about has failed in achieving its objective of bringing people together. The questions are many but answers are none. But, one thing is for sure, till the time political parties in India continue to use this communal card, we won’t be able to come out of this mess. Let’s hope that things change in the upcoming general elections.

“Half of the homes in world’s largest democracy have cellphones, but no toilets”

India, which boosts to be the world’s largest democracy, has a pitiable record when it comes to providing basic amenities to its people to let them live a respectful life. Half of the country’s population is devoid of the basic necessities of life like good quality food, clean drinkable water, electricity, proper medical and sanitation facilities, and competent education system. Numbers are staggering and highly shocking when it comes to the availability of the sanitary facilities for the people living in the country.


 Half of the homes in the country don’t have toilets as people are forced to defecate outside in the open, leading to some serious health issues. This open defecation of human excreta not only leads to the generation of harmful bacteria and germs, which further result in serious health problems among people but also degrades the quality of the soil and pollutes the environment. According to a recent UN report, India constitutes more than 60% of the world’s population who defecate in the open. It boggles our mind beyond a permissible limit when we consider that most of these toilet deprived homes have access to cellphones. What’s the use of these cellphones when people are forced to excrete in the open, violating the sanctity of women and letting people especially children die because of the infection induced from open defecation.


The situation becomes more and more grim as you go into the interior regions of the country. These open defecations give birth to manual scavenging, which is considered as the worst form of punishment. Despite the stringent anti- manual scavenging act passed by the govt. of India, manual scavenging is still very much persistent in certain parts of the country. Ineffective implementation of the anti-manual scavenging act and the absence of the comprehensive policies from the govt. for providing free sanitary services to the poor have been cited as the main reasons for the inability in putting an end to manual scavenging.


In the last two years, things have started to improve as ministry of rural development has become more proactive in handling issues related with sanitation. A campaign “no toilets, no bride” was started last year by the minister of rural development, Mr. Jairam Ramesh, where he exhorted women living in rural areas not to marry in families where there were no toilets. More emphasis is now being given to the issues related with sanitation and the need for toilet equipped homes. Bringing in Ms. Vidya Balan as the brand ambassador for the rural development has helped in promoting the cause further.


This changed attitude on the part of our govt. augurs well for India, who for long has suffered with sanitation related issues. India’s sanitation and toilets statistics will continue to raise stinks unless some drastic measures are taken up. In this 21^st century, India continues to lag behind in 17^th century when it comes to providing sanitation facilities for the people. We all hope that these statistics change soon.

Bullying – a reflection on the failure of Indian educational system

Yesterday, a bizarre and highly deplorable event took place in one of the leading schools of the nation. The “bullying” of a 7^th standard EWS student by seven 6^th grade students at the modern public school, located in the vasant vihar area of New Delhi shook the nation and raised many questions regarding the quality of the education given out to the children in India. The barbarity of the event was so much that it would have made even the hard skinned stoics emotional. What is more troubling and shocking is that the incident happened in one of the better schools in the country, with children who were involved in the incident all hailing from good family backgrounds. “Bullying” at its worst form.



So the first question which comes to our mind is “what actually bullying is”. “Bullying” is basically the use of force, power, threat to abuse, intimidate, or aggressively imposing domination over others. People who indulge in bullying have a tendency to insert their behaviour over others resulting in domination which can lead to mental, physical, verbal harassment of the victim. Bullying over a period of time becomes a habbit and hence presents a danger to the society. Bullying if continued uninhibited over a period of time can lead to mental illness, resulting in psychopaths. It inflicts injuries, not just physical but also mental, on the victims. The scars left by such incidences on the victim have a long lasting effect.




Bullying is not new to us. It has been there for decades and its degree of prevalence in schools, colleges, offices is just staggering and mind-boggling, but still no comprehensive policy has been framed by the govt. to counter its menace. Our judicial system doesn’t even recognize bullying as an offence. The presence of bullying in society reflects on the failure of our educational system. It’s the fault of both schools and parents. Too much focus by the teachers in schools on getting marks leads to less peer interaction, which hinders the development of soft skills in children. Children find it difficult to cope with these situations alone as they don’t find proper support from parents. It’s the duty of the parents to interact with their children and help them learn the art of interaction. The children involved in the incident yesterday lacked even the basic manners. You can’t blame only school for that. Parents need to take the blame for it as they have failed to inculcate the basic manners in their children. Parents and schools need to work in collaboration with each other to help their children from becoming a bully. A comprehensive policy by the govt. would also help in reducing the menace of bullying. We all somewhere or the other have suffered from bullying. It’s the time we put an end to it.

Why India needs more “Gulabi Gangs”

Gulabi Gang, a self made all women organization started in 2006 by a handful of Indian women vigilantes and social activists hailing from the banda district of Indian state Uttar Pradesh. The organization was initially started with the objective of supporting and helping out Indian rural women who suffer at the hands of Indian men in the banda district only. The success of the movement in achieving its core objective by helping the women of the banda district to fight against the social injustice, domestic violence and the patriarchal mindset of Indian society gave the movement a lot of momentum and national recognition. The movement transcended all the barriers and it has now become a national phenomena. Today, it has more than ten thousand volunteers, social and women right activists, working really hard for uplifting the sorry state of affairs of Indian rural women.




Indian women since ages have been suffering at the hands of Indian men through the realms of social injustice and gender bias. The prevalence of domestic violence, female foeticide, early girl child marriage, trafficking of young girls has been the major reason for the present abysmal condition of women in the country. And, the absolute oblivious behaviour of our government just adds to the travesty and woefulness of the situation. In majority of the cases, no financial aid is given by the government to these organizations, which vouch and fight for the rights of the women, and in the rest of the cases, the help given is insufficient.


The things have started to change but the change is too slow to be of any relevance. India needs a more comprehensive policy to tackle these issues and hence bring about a change in the system, and these changes can only be brought through public-private partnerships. Indian govt. needs to collaborate with these women self help groups, organizations, movements and provide them with necessary aids to bring about a structural change in this men dominated patriarchal society. India needs more organizations like gulabi gang which can help further the cause.

Some of the Beautiful Places in India

TAJ MAHAL : The Symbol Of Love

Agra, India

UDAIPUR : The City Of Palaces And Lakes

Rajasthan, India

Golden Temple, Amritsar : The Place Of Worship

Amritsar, Punjab

Red Fort : Pride Of India

New Delhi, India

Gateway Of India : Taj Mahal Of Mumbai

Mumbai, India

Sun Temple, Konark

Odisha, India


Kashmir : Heaven on Earth

Kashmir, India


Akshardam Mandir

New Delhi, India

Alleppey Backwaters, Kerela

Kerela, India

Is Arvind Kejriwal right in his strategy

    

Arvind Kejriwal, a social activist turned politician and the founding member of the “Aam Aadmi Party”, has been hailed as the most popular public figure of 2013 by many and rightly so, for his stand against corruption and the high-handed, clumsy political system of the country. The man behind the implementation of the Right to Information Act, 2005 has become a household figure in Delhi in a short time owing to his common people like mannerisms and is regarded as the crusader for the fight against corruption.

With the new rays of hope for change, which Mr. Kejriwal had exhibited and instilled in the common people before the Delhi state elections, gave the much required confidence and belief to us to fight against the malfunctioned political and bureaucratic systems. Issues like corruption, misgovernance, high handed political system, inflation, safety of women disgruntled the common people and hence they became the core issues for the elections to be fought upon. Mr. Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party successfully fought the elections on these key issues, and the unprecedented success of the Aam Aadmi Party, a first timer, in the recently concluded elections bears absolute testimony to it.


But as they say, every story has two sides. Since the appointment of Mr. Kejriwal as the chief minister of Delhi, many issues have turned up which have questioned the credibility of the Aam Aadmi Party. Populist promises made before the elections of reducing the electricity prices by half and providing free water haven’t been fulfilled. This has raised many eyebrows in the various corners of the city regarding the trustworthiness of AAP. Further, demeaning and denigrating the republic day celebrations and violating section 144 show disrespect for the Indian constitution. Instead of taking every issue to the streets. Mr. Kejriwal must opt for deliberations to reach more productive solutions amicably. Negotiations and deliberations are the tools of problem solving and relation building which must be used effectively by the AAP whether over the issue of the control over Delhi police or any issue for that matter. Similarly, foul language doesn’t have any room in the politics. The language used by the law minister of Delhi, Mr. Somnath Bharti, was deplorable. Respect for competitors must always be there and the use of the foul language violates the sanctity of it. Also, Mr. Kejriwal needs to know that excessive populism will not take him far. Populism might give short term political mileage and benefits to him but it adversely effects the health of the economy as it puts a lot of financial burden on the government. Instead of promising half reduction in the electricity prices, Mr. Kejriwal could have given impetus and encouragement to the private players to engage in the power production, thus increasing the output. This would have automatically reduced the electricity prices. The purpose in both the cases is same but the path chosen is different.



We all hope that Mr. Kejriwal and his party learn from these experiences and try to imbibe a sense of respect towards the constitution. People have voted them into power by bestowing a lot of confidence upon them. They must try to uphold that. We all hope that change which Mr. Kejriwal had shown to us before the elections materializes.