If you go ahead and position yourself on a high moral ground, you must walk the talk and ensure that no one including yourself brings you down. That doesn’t seem to be happening as of now. For starters, I would like Arvind Kejriwal should pick and choose any one of the two posts he is holding on, CM of Delhi or Chief of Aam Aadmi Party. The way it is going, city and party both stand to lose. There is of course no dearth of good leaders in the Aam Aadmi Party today and this is actually doable. If top 10 leaders of Aam Aadmi Party detach themselves from their own biases, they would all emphatically say, one person – one post would work.
The second thing which I wish Arvind Kejriwal would announce is to declare the proposed steps to limit time for all AAP leaders to hold office or a ministerial berth. There should be a defined term beyond which a person should go back to being an active non-office bearer member and that should apply for Arvind Kejriwal too. As on date, Arvind Kejriwal is a bigger brand than Aam Aadmi Party and this is not a good development. If AAP has to be a long-term player, it must grow beyond Arvind Kejriwal. It is important that AAP remains “about people” and doesn’t become “about leaders”. Leaders, for an AAP like model to survive and flourish, should be at best facilitators and motivators. They shouldn’t be holding ministerial berths and getting involved in doing tasks which can be done by others. They should be monitoring progress and working on ensuring that tangibles are delivered at each stage. A culture of party first, post afterwards must be inculcated at each unit level.
Aam Aadmi Party is a grounded to ground movement; it is very important that they ensure that everyone is brought to ground level politics and under no case AAP leaders should try to emulate “higher than higher” seats that Congress and BJP politicians use to run their governments. I am not saying that government should be run from streets, what I am saying is the government must stay on the ground and ensure that purpose for which it is there is not lost at all. They should ensure that streets remain their ears and eyes and if their actions are not getting response from people they shouldn’t start “discovering” logic or reasoning for the lack of response. They should accept, tweak and act immediately in light of what people expect them to do.
Arvind Kejriwal and other leaders must ask themselves every day on what difference did they make today and whether that difference makes a common man’s life better in any way. That is the bottom line and that is the high moral ground they have been elected on. They must ensure that day in and day out. If AAP has to remain relevant and bring about a change, they must keep on setting their expectations from themselves higher and keep on measuring themselves against those benchmarks.
