OPINION

Last week Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA) went on a strike. The agitating teachers marched from Delhi University campus to Delhi Chief Minister’s residence demanding their long pending salaries. This event failed to find space in the columns of the city newspapers next day. It’s another matter that the same newspapers on the said day had filled columns with all kinds of inanities about Delhi government’s ‘yeoman’ efforts.

This has been the general story for the past nine years. Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, among other qualities, has show the brazen ability to practise McCarthyism. Now what’s that? McCarthyism is the practice of making false or unfounded accusations specially done in public and in an attention-grabbing manner.

Arvind Kejriwal’s Delhi Model has less to do with governance and/or development but certainly more to do with the politics of fib, based on blatant falsehood. Aap Aadmi Party came to power targeting Sheila Dikshit-led Delhi government of corruption, and promising an honest government.

Today Kejriwal’s one minister is cooling heels behind bars, two are being probed for corruption and a close confidant who heads the Waqf Board has also been taken into police custody. The court has sent him on police remand.

The Sunday before the last, we had the nation glued to the television sets to a post-lunch spectacle of the twin towers built by real estate giant Supertech in Noida being brought down. Some news channels called it as ‘Towers of Corruption’. The channels had a field day, in fact they built up the feverish pitch talking about the event overlooking all the other developments for more than 24 hours.

Many years ago, at a seminar, one had heard the late Finance Minister Arun Jaitley say, “Camera likes sad pictures.” The much adored attorney had gone onto to say, “Camera, per say, likes unhappy people. It likes tragedies. It can capture a flood, an earthquake, and a famine. It can capture very easily an angry man or a suffering person. So if you say this year India had best-ever food grain production in history, which is factually correct, the camera is bored with that item. It doesn’t have any value. It likes a house broken in an earthquake; it doesn’t like the building which is standing erect.”

None really cared about the twin-towers in Noida except those who had invested in them and those who felt cheated for the twins encroaching on their legitimate open space. For the first time in 2012, the residents of the society approached the court. The builder had sold the flats promising green areas around them, instead, twin towers were erected there.

One was pleasantly surprised last week to see a notification from Delhi government banning the use of crackers till January 1, 2023. The element of surprise was the early notification and a good feeling that despite the ongoing political fracas, there were people in the bureaucracy alive to the problems of the people.

The notified ban is similar to the practise in the past years when the Supreme Court, and on its goading the city government, clamped restrictions on the use of crackers during the festival of lights -- Diwali, and the winter marriage season. These bans were notified as part of the steps taken to check ever rising air pollution.

However, in the past the bans came late giving ample time for the sale of crackers in the grey market. Thus despite the ban one always woke up to the morning after Diwali to choking air.

The early announcement of ban should caution the cracker manufacturers to bring down the rate of production. The government may also keep an eye on the source of crackers rather than clamping down on the godowns and shops at a later date.

This should also help deterring the huge investments which go into the cracker business, as Diwali is celebrated with much fervour not only in Delhi but in almost all the parts of North India. However, it must be noted that high air pollution is peculiar to Delhi and much more than other part North India. This is largely due to Delhi’s geographical position, which is like a passage between the plains of Punjab and Ganga-Yamuna doab.

In William Shakespeare’s famous play Hamlet, there is a discussion on sanity and insanity. Given the ‘insane’ events during the special session of Delhi assembly, convened Friday last, the question arises whether it was a deliberate act to drown the controversy around Excise Policy scam or finding a way out of the cesspool of corruption has become difficult.

To somebody who has followed career graph of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for two decades now, given the current situation, he is making the most ‘rational’ move to defend his party and the government. He has to ensure that the drama of absurd goes on. No wonder there would be a vote of confidence on Monday despite no such demand being made by the Opposition or a direction coming from Raj Niwas.
 

Delhi government is now functioning with the sole purpose of creating perception that its leader Arvind Kejriwal was an alternative to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Logical construction and argument have given way to irrational and illogical speech.

In the ongoing political tussle between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the apologists for the former have been quick to point out that Arvind Kejriwal has turned tables on the BJP. They say that he has managed to change the narrative in the public domain from excise scam to comparison between Delhi’s education model with other states especially those ruled by the BJP.

The elucidation of these apologists accompany daily output of the ‘AAP certifying agency’, which has been working overtime calling its baiters corrupt and giving itself ‘clean chit’ in corruption charges. These are difficult times for the AAP, though its thick skinned leadership may deny it. The ruling party in NCT Delhi hopping from one gimmick to another shows that for once AAP’s barbs-laced politics is not working.

First calling one day special session of the assembly, then extending it by another day to seek vote of confidence when nobody demanded it. This is followed by night-long dharna in Delhi assembly premises demanding resignation of the Lieutenant Governor and finally Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, the main accused in the excise scam, giving himself ‘clean chit’, all reflect at the AAP’s desperate move to remain in news for ‘right reasons’ and drown the charges of corruption against it.

Kejriwal’s attempt to create a narrative around Delhi model of education too has backfired, as the Opposition has released startling data that enrolment in government schools were consistently falling ever since AAP came to power. The data showed that the number of children in Delhi’s government schools was 16.1 lakh in 2013-14, but decreased to 15.1 lakh in 2019-20. The figures showed that before 2013-14, every year the number of children in government schools was increasing by about 60,000, but after Kejriwal government came to office, the number started to decline.