Khaleej Times
C. P. Surendran
In the Wild West movies like the Good, Bad and the Ugly, there would be one indispensable scene: A steely Clint Eastwood standing tall, his eyes a dangerous slit, his features grim, waiting for his opponent to first make the draw. And then he goes bang; hands fast as lightning. In Delhi, parts of which in this horrifying summer look like the arid West, there’s a spaghetti cowboy tale going on with a certain tragi-comic effect. The cowboys in question are the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. Delhi was a Union Territory until 1991, when by an amendment to the Constitution, it was declared National Capital Region. Or NCR. The NCR extends to neighbouring states like Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Delhi’s population is a little over 16 million. In effect, we are almost talking about a country. Now, Delhi, like any other state in India, has its own legislature and other administrative paraphernalia. Arvind Kejriwal is the present Chief Minister, and he is nothing if not one of the biggest political disruptionists of Independent India; his party AAP had upset centuries-old political establishments like the Congress and the well-entrenched right wing BJP, to become the ruling party of Delhi. The capital of Delhi is New Delhi. New Delhi also alternates as the capital of India. So the New Delhi part is administered by the federal government at the Centre. In terms of status and administrative power, that leaves the Delhi CM little clout.
Which is why Kejriwal has been asking to make Delhi fully a state. The party at the Centre, BJP, would not like that to happen for obvious reasons. But since Modi is the PM, he would rather not be seen as directly confronting a chief minister. He therefore shoots over from some horse’s shoulder. Kejriwal is the unlikely Eastwood. He shoots straight-and gets into trouble.
A few weeks ago, he had caused acute embarrassment to Modi and his party by raising the question of the educational status of the PM. After a few terrible weeks of shame and anger, finally the ruling BJP rustled up a Bachelor’s certificate from Delhi University which, even if genuine, was trolled widely as a fake in the social media. No prime minister of a civilised country deserved to go through that humiliation. Since then the Modi government has been returning the favour with particular fervour. The latest in a series of arrests -fabricated charges, according to Kejriwal-of AAP leaders is that of the member of the legislature Dinesh Mohaniya. He was picked by the police in the middle of a press conference on Saturday on charges of man-handling and abusing a group of women protesting against water shortage. Not one report talks about the provenance of the women in question. The chances are that they are from the BJP. Mohaniya has been remanded in judicial custody. He is not the only one the police – or Mr Modi is after: other AAP MLAs (Member of Legislature Assembly) include Somnath Bharti, Manoj Kumar, Mahinder Yadav, Akhilesh Pati, and so it goes. Kejriwal says Modi and his friends are out to discredit his party by means of false accusations and highly visible, headline grabbing arrests.
The bizarre fact is that the real opposition to the Modi government does not come from the hoary Congress Party and its leaders like Sonia Gandhi or Rahul Gandhi. The real opposition is a one-man army called Arvind Kejriwal, who if he had founded a start up, would have easily disrupted the game and would be sitting on billions of dollars for the same energy he is putting into upsetting the Modi establishment.
There are many political lessons to be learnt from Kejriwal. But how either he or Modi finds the time for all these politicking, when there is no dearth of real issues to be handled, is a mystery. Which is also why you are not sure you should laugh or cry. For sure, it’s entertainment. Of a kind.
