Arvind Kejriwal

by jalan • 13 years ago

166 44 13 years ago

sgpl• 13 years ago

For those unfamiliar with the Indian political scene:

Arvind Kejriwal is a rookie politician who defeated (three-time Chief Minister of Delhi) Sheila Dikshit in the Delhi Legislative Assembly elections (held today).

He co-founded a political organization named Aam Aadmi Party (Translation: Common Man's Party) that won 28 of Delhi's 70 seats in its electoral debut, just 3 shy of BJP (an established National Party), and more than three times the no. of seats won by Indian National Congress (the incumbent party in Delhi).

Relevant background information on Arvind Kejriwal [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvind_Kejriwal

[Edit: corrected figures based on child comment]

denzil_correa• 13 years ago

He co-founded a political organization named Aam Aadmi Party (Translation: Common Man Party) that won 27 of Delhi's 70 seats in its electoral debut, just 6 shy of BJP (an established National Party), and almost three times the no. of seats won by Indian National Congress (the incumbent party in Delhi).

AAP won 38 seats and BJP won 30 [0]

[0] http://eciresults.nic.in/PartyWiseResult.htm

CGudapati2• 13 years ago

I think you meant 28 and 31

adharmad• 13 years ago

AAP (Aam aadmi party)'s performance is unprecedented for a 1-year old party taking on national parties that were 50-year old with far more money and resources. Its a stunning debut for the AAP!

hrjet• 13 years ago

Perhaps more relevant to HN, Arvind Kejriwal graduated from IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) which is somewhat analogous to MIT in the Indian context. He then joined the administrative services.

So he is a techy turned bureaucrat, turned activist, turned politician.

justplay• 13 years ago

seeing this post in front page of HN clearly proves that it has many Indian users.

deadslow2• 13 years ago

It only proves that HN has at least 16(points at the time of this comment) Indian users.

deadslow2• 13 years ago

And Now it proves that 117(points at the time of this comment) people(Indians or not) found this article interesting. :)

dhaneshnm3• 13 years ago

Mr. Kejriwal is by no means a "common man".He has a history in politics,though not in electoral politics. But I do agree that this election reminds scenes from some movies like "Nayak" and "Yuva". Overall a nice Article though :)

CGudapati2• 13 years ago

I am very happy for Arvind. He could have been a millionaire while doing his IRS job. He left all that for his principles. He was maligned and constantly criticized. Still his party overcame all the hurdles. His rivals could afford funds(guess where they came from?) which are in orders of magnitude larger than his party's tiny 20 crores(less than budget of a Hindi movie). I wish nothing but best to him and hope he brings the change that India desperately needs.

harichinnan• 13 years ago

correction: Not if he wanted to do it honestly. He would've become a millionaire only if he had taken bribes.

sreeni_ananth• 13 years ago

Corruption is the main reason keeping India from being a developed country. Hope this guy brings the change India needs.

jalayir• 13 years ago

Define corruption.

wsxcde3• 13 years ago

Not really. India's problems are almost entirely due to colonialism. At independence, life expectancy was 30 years, literacy rate was 15% and the population was about 300 million and IIRC the avg per capita GDP was approx $300 in today's dollars. (If these numbers seem unbelievable, I suggest looking them up. They are easy to verify.)

Combined with this, India inherited a dysfunctional governmental bureaucracy and law and order system which was aimed at preserving British control over India and not really do the actual job of governing the country. The founders did the best they could, and copied a bunch of seemingly good ideas from a bunch of western economies. This failed miserably because they overlooked the fact that western economies were fuelled by slavery, colonization, reckless industrialization and exploitation of natural resources. India doesn't have the natural resources like the US because there isn't any land left to be stolen. Exploiting colonial resources like the European powers is also out of the question. Bonded labourers etc. were (are?) present to some extent, but large-scale disenfranchisement and exploitation of entire demographics similar to the model used by westerners fifty or so years ago is not really tenable in today's world.

The point is, it's now obvious that the western model was bound to fail, but unfortunately this wasn't obvious back in the 50s. It's only now that India is making visible progress towards the goal of development, but this is largely because of the ground work laid in the last 50 or so years in raising levels of education and healthcare (which of course still have quite a long way to improve) to a reasonable baseline.

dataworx2• 13 years ago

I'm confused.. India's "dysfunctional governmental bureaucracy and law and order system... failed miserably" because it was cloned from the west. But you're also saying the government laid the groundwork over 50 years to raise levels of education and healthcare so that India is now making "visible progress".

I don't think @sreeni_ananth's comment was discounting the role of colonialism, but rather looking at the way out. There's not much we can do now about what was done to India in the past (except maybe harboring ill will against 'the west'?). But looking to India's future, I'd have agree with him that the main issue standing in the path of India's full recovery and health is corruption.

techaddict0092• 13 years ago

I am surpised to see "AAP" Aam Admi Parties name in CIA's website : https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/... (Check out India) You can see its clearly mentioned in the note that "India has dozens of national and regional political parties; only parties with four or more seats in the People's Assembly are listed" then how cam AAP is already there ?

yati• 13 years ago

I can see AITMC at #3

techaddict0092• 13 years ago

Sorry My Mistake Have edited above answer.

But how can AAP be present in list. Election result got declared today and still they do not have even 1 assembly member (Signature are yet to be made. There is situation of reelection).

AAP was in the list since so many days...

prateek_mir3• 13 years ago

This needed to be shared, thanks for putting in the effort ! [ I was thinking of writing a similar piece myself, but you just DID it ]

jalan• 13 years ago

Thanks, indeed this needs to be shared. Glad you liked it.

sanjkris• 13 years ago

Theres actually 2 other HUGE winners in these Indian elections: 1. The Election Commission of India that galvanized 60-80% of the voters to turn out (normally its 30-40%). 70% women voter turnout. 90% 18-29 voter age turnout 2. Youth voters < 29 yrs of age

India will see 500-600 mln voters turn out in May for the LokSabha elections. The US could learn 2 lessons from all this: 1. How a true democracy with 60% voter participation works 2. You can send a man to the moon but cant have a woman President. How do other countries integrate women politicians and why it works

gameshot911• 13 years ago

You can send a man to the moon but cant have a woman President.

That's not a fair critique at all. Had Barack Obama (first black president) not won, there's a very real possibility that Hillary Clinton would have been elected president. Both of which represent political firsts and a changing system towards greater integration.

prateek_mir3• 13 years ago

The case study of this party is kind of a Proof of Concept, if you will, showing that -

1. Elections can be fought with clean money, ( and the kind of donations that they received (in terms of quanta of individual contribution), where the mode should be well below 20$s per cap. makes it kind of a crowd funded campaign )

2. The part that social media can play in mobilizing people and getting point across when traditional news media blacks you out.

3. Targeted manifestos, like targeted advertisements engage people more as compared to conventional 1-state-1-manifesto approach..

4. That there is a space for clean politics.

I am curious about how things will turn out for Delhi now, and for India in the coming LS elections.

pratik6612• 13 years ago

The case study should note that:

The constituency of Delhi is:

1. More educated than the rest of the country 2. Has a higher level of income than the rest of the country 3. Generally more cosmopolitan than the rest of the country.

I can provide sources for the first 2 if you would like. The third is debatable as the only evidence I have is anecdotal.

arshedg• 13 years ago

Point 2 is wrong. Tripura and kerala are more educated(94.05 and 93.65), Delhi is only having 86.3%.

linux_devil4• 13 years ago

He belongs to state X(Haryana) and lives in state Y(U.P) and challenges 3 term chief minister of the Z(New Delhi) and wins . Political hack it is , sounds like proxies and socks in use.

pavanky• 13 years ago

Delhi is not a state. Indian politicians have contested in constituencies they have not resided for a very long time. Kejriwal hasn't done something new here.

linux_devil4• 13 years ago

Yes , but certainly with a debut and huge margin it's a big deal .

chetanahuja• 13 years ago

Delhi is a state for most practical purposes.

from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi

"A union territory, the political administration of the NCT of Delhi today more closely resembles that of a state of India, with its own legislature, high court and an executive council of ministers headed by a Chief Minister."

dangoldin• 13 years ago

What a timely post! I'm in Delhi now for a wedding and there's definitely a ton of celebration going on. Here's hoping this gets past the honeymoon phase and turns into something bigger.

piyushpr134• 13 years ago

For those wondering why this is relevant to HN: AAP or Common man's party (translated literally) is like a crowdfunded startup. This guy is a rookie in politics who managed to get significant number of seats in this election using crowd funding(through AAP's website). AAP, in itself, is like a startup which is trying to completely disrupt an industry which has been in control of two parties(mostly) so far.

linux_devil4• 13 years ago

Its just like crowd funded start-up who even stopped asking for funds when he had enough to fight for elections. Lot of Indians in India and other countries did help in donations. He was fighting from people's money for the people of the country . Fought election for first time and that too against veteran 15 year term serving chief minister and won.

known2• 13 years ago

Indians are brainwashed to believe that 'voting in elections = democracy'.

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-12-07/news...

linux_devil4• 13 years ago

article refer to famous political figure of ex-ruling party(INC) in Delhi , a person who challenged Arvind Kejriwal 1 year ago to come into politics and win , Arvind did win his first election . No one give ears to such speech and articles of such politician(Kapil Sibbal) .

prateek_mir3• 13 years ago

In-fact, It is the very same philosophy that AAP stands for, that 'voting in elections != democracy',

primitivesuave• 13 years ago

Some details for anyone who doesn't know about the systematic corruption in India:

Suppose you are running a business that has to pay tax on something (excise tax, tariff, etc). Every month, you put together the amount of tax you have to pay, along with a fixed bribe of around 5000 rupees (approximately 85 dollars) on top. Obviously, if you don't pay the bribe, the IRS will fuck with you until you do pay the bribe, so you pay the bribe.

The tax collector, along with collecting the calculated amount of taxes for each business, has to send 100,000 rupees to his boss every month. This is a fixed amount, the boss will usually not care how much the collector made in bribes as long as he gets his 100k. This boss will have to send 2,000,000 rupees to his boss, eventually culminating with the CM (Chief Minister) receiving a massive amount of bribe money each month.

However, the CM does not keep all of this money. Because the CM is dependent on his political party to keep his job, he will send a large percentage of this money to the party fund (which is usually under his control). During election season, this money is used to blatantly trick/pay off people to guarantee more powerful status for the party, which inevitably leads to a more powerful position for whichever corrupt person is at the top of the food chain.

Suppose you were an idealistic tax collector in this system of corruption, and one month you took some mushrooms or whatever and you decided you would no longer contribute bribes to the system of corruption. Your boss will not retaliate by having you killed or tortured, he/she will simply transfer you to a remote village with no electricity or running water. There, you will be hated by the villagers as the asshole tax collector. The mere prospect of uprooting one's family and lifestyle is more than any tax collector is willing to accept for the sake of idealism, so the systematic corruption continues, even today.

So, as this article suggests, there might finally be a guy at the top who will end the corruption and improve the system of taxation. His background as a tax-collector-turned-activist provides him with a high level of credibility, and I'm sure he'll go very far.

known2• 13 years ago

AAP is not scalable across India like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala

Arvind Kejriwal

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