OPINION

While there could be lack of agreement with the Arvind Kejriwal government on most of its actions, which are often propelled by electoral considerations, there is not much scope for the criticism of its new excise policy especially on the count of lowering the age of consumption. This was probably the best option Delhi Government had in tiding over the financial crisis staring at it.

Despite we being the country of Mahatma Gandhi, let’s be honest with the fact that alcohol is the biggest contributor to taxes in India with Delhi not being any different. Last year, Delhi Government had constituted a committee to come up with suggestions to increase tax revenues and more importantly stop tax evasions. One of the major recommendations of the committee has been to reduce the legal age for consumption from 25 to 21 years, bringing it at par with Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.

The Delhi Government in its excise policy for 2021-22, which was approved on March 23 last, has decided to accept these recommendations. This has raised the hackles of a ‘sanskari’ Delhi unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In its bumble-mumble, state unit president of the ruling party at the Centre, Adesh Gupta has conveniently forgotten the fact that the neighbouring states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh are both ruled by the BJP.

Last week Parliament passed the National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill, 2021, which reaffirmed the fact that government in Delhi meant the Lieutenant Governor and not the cabinet headed by the Chief minister. The passage of the bill has been decried by the Opposition as murder of democracy. There is a disagreement on this.

Democracy is not necessariy a synonym for anarchic, disorderly administration, something which we have been witness to post-2013, when the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for the first time came to power. The NCT Act, passed in 1991, gave assembly to the union territory of Delhi but it always meant the legislative process to be closely supervised by the Centre through the Lieutenant Government.

This was necessary given the special status of the national Capital strategically and the huge funds released by the Centre to keep the Delhi government going. The chief ministers preceding the present incumbent Arvind Kejriwal always worked with this understanding despite on several occasions different parties ruling at the Centre and in the state.

The resignations of social scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta and economist Arvind Subramanian from the faculty of Ashoka University has started a discussion about a liberal university unable take the load of ‘political liability’. For those who may not know, Ashoka is a private university which marketed itself as a liberal centre of learning albeit at a huge fee.

With resignation of the two dons, and believing what they have mentioned as the reasons for them quitting to be true, the whole marketing pitch of the Ashoka University has come a cropper. Ashoka is not a place for poor seeking knowledge but largely a finishing school for the rich seeking a seat in the universities abroad.

Having a pantheon of professors with a foreign connect has by far been its best marketing instrument attracting students from rich Indian, and largely upper-caste families, who could not make it to centres like Delhi University on the account of reservations, with just 40 percent of the seats available for them. These professors often issue ‘academic visas’ for the campuses abroad

Last week the Delhi’s Finance Minister Manish Sisodia presented budget in assembly where he claimed a hike on the allocations in the education sector. The Delhi Government has for the past six years made many a claims of spending on education but unfortunately it has so far failed to show on the ground.

It’s matter of record that in the past six years, Delhi Government has failed to open any new school or college in the national Capital. What it has done is the retrofitting of the government school, which in natural course is undertaken by any government unless its

 an anarchic establishment like the one run by Lalu Prasad-Rabri Devi for many years in the state of Bihar.

The political circles in the national Capital have been abuzz ever since on Wednesday afternoon Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal expressed his desire to rule as per the principles of Ram Rajya. Participating in a debate in Delhi Assembly Kejriwal said that one of his guiding principles would be sending the elderly on free pilgrimage to the Ram Temple being built in Ayodhya on the site of demolished Babri Masjid.

While Kejriwal’s announcements may have come as a surprise, those who have followed origin and politics of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) would know that sooner or later this revelation had to come. Soon after AAP came to power for the first time in 2013, party’s then leading ideologue Yogender Yadav was asked about the AAP’s ideological orientation.

Yadav in his customary, convulated argument laced with sweet ininanities had said that the party was oriented towards ‘people’s welfare’ and no ideology could be an impediment in pursuing the agenda of welfarism. Yadav, Prashant Bhshan and others for the Left have been ousted from the party, so has been Kapil Mishra from the Right.