Arvind Kejriwal’s Janta Darbars- How helpful are they?
February 24, 2015
Spectacle and Arvind Kejriwal seem inseparable. The Aam Aadmi Party supremo’s second innings as Delhi chief minister, after a huge mandate, is as spectacular as his first one – devoid of any compunction of playing to the gallery.
Consider him resuming his Janata Darbars even before he is settled in Delhi! He still lives at his wife’s official accommodation at Kaushambi in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh and it is here that he is holding his Janata Darbars.
Doesn’t this sound weird that the chief minister of Delhi holds his “darbars” in Uttar Pradesh? In other words, isn’t this comparable to the theatre of the absurd?
What is the hurry for him to meet just a few hundred people? Many even turned up from UP
Kejriwal’s Janata Darbars to address the people’s problems – an act of populism
His move to hold Janata Darbar at best can be yet another act of populism just like his oath taking ceremony. In fact both the events border on hypocrisy – Didn’t he want to prove that he was one among the crowd when he made a public spectacle of an event as official as a swearing-in ceremony of the Chief Minister? Yet, he embarked on holding “darbars”, which uncannily resemble the diwaan-e-aam darbars of erstwhile kings of the bygone era.
Perhaps Kejriwal wants to convey that he is the “people’s king”. Fine enough. Yet, Kejriwal is not alone in this self indulgent role of “dispenser of justice” a la the kings of yore. The Bihar CM, Nitish Kumar had boasted in the past that it was actually he who had pioneered this concept of holding public darbars to address the people’s problems. “There was no past example of such a programme when a chief minister interacted directly with the common man. It was started in Bihar during my regime,” he once told an interviewer. Kumar initially used to hold the darbar twice in a week but then made it a weekly affair. His style was imitated by the UP CM Akhilesh Yadav, who too by promising to be a “responsive chief minister” started holding Janta Darbar” every Wednesday at his residence – a marked departure from his predecessor Mayawati, who during her five-year term never interacted with the general public.
The question though arises is whether such darbars are just a platform for the rulers to personally mingle with the common gentry?
It is always good for the rulers to interact with the common people. But certainly in a technology driven society, such limited interactions cannot be the best forum to redress public grievances.
Kejriwal should have resorted to digital technology
It may be mentioned that the Telugu Desam Party chief and Andhra Pradesh CM N. Chandrababu Naidu used video conferencing to interact with the masses simultaneously at different places of Andhra. While Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy too has been holding such mass contact programmes and many get their issues resolved, the state has a multi-layered grievance redressal system that even won a UN award.
Similarly, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as the then Gujarat Chief Minister had introduced the CM’s online grievance redressal system called SWAGAT (State Wide Attention on Grievances by application of technology) which twice received the United Nations Public Service Award for addressing the complaints of 55 million citizens. As the name suggested, the grievance redressal system was based on digital technology and comprised three levels of Taluka, District and State, handled in a decentralised manner but deliverance of redressal was done centrally. Modi used to organise a SWAGAT session, that covered all 18,000 villages, 225 talukas and 26 districts of Gujarat, on fourth Thursday of every month in presence of bureaucratic officials at various levels of secretary cadre.
Besides, there are other technology supported initiatives to address public grievances that exist in different states of the country – the Jan Mitra in Rajasthan, which is an integrated e-platform that includes grievance redressal in addition to public delivery; Shikayat” for rural and semi-urban people in Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha and Haryana, which is a platform for online complaints; “Lok Mitra” in Himachal Pradesh, which again is an online grievance redressal mechanism for villagers.
Even Delhi has a Public Grievances Commission that is supposed to administer a “comprehensive mechanism for the effective redressal of grievances received from members of the public”.
Besides, Delhi had also launched an online public grievance system at complaints.mcdonline.gov.in in 2005 but the website does not exist anymore.
So wouldn’t it have been more apt for Kejriwal to expand his reach through digital technology than to just meeting a few hundreds of complainants and that too in UP?
The line between a spectacle and showmanship though is not as blurred as it appears. If one had to cherry pick the two most enduring images of Kejriwal’s first stint as the CM, they could easily be of his sit-in at the Raisina Hill – a first by any sitting CM – that had jeopardized the very celebration of the Republic Day last year; and of the chaos at his first Janata Darbar before the Delhi Secretariat where people had thronged to the venue hoping to get an audience with their ‘aam aadmi’ (common man) Chief Minister last year.
On both occasions, Kejriwal had created a spectacle and was compelled to make a hasty retreat – At Raisina Hill, he had to end his over 30 hour long dharna abruptly after a compromise with the Centre (when two police officers were sent on leave over his demand for suspension of five officials for alleged dereliction of duty). At state secretariat, he had to abandon his Janata Darbar midway after being mobbed, and had to apologise.
Yet the pattern of his operations is still the same. While in his interviews he has not ruled out the possibilities of more sit-ins, his Janata Darbars do smack of hypocrisy considering that last time he had realised that posting grievances online was a better option and had promised to set up a call centre for the purpose and even urged the people to send their complaints via post. He had even talked of instead of holding darbars, he would reach out to the people by visiting different areas of Delhi “every Saturday”.
But the urge for pomp and show – fraught with high drama– is hard to die. After all, it is this populism that catapulted Kejriwal to the helm of power. Any doubt?
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