Lalu Yadav and Arvind Kejriwal cut from the same cloth named greed

This past couple of days one old and another relatively new player has landed in trouble on account of the commonplace love for easy money.Former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Yadav now stares at a fresh round of convictions in the Rs 950-crore fodder scam following the apex court order. A nine-month time- limit for all pending cases to be heard and disposed of could well write finis to Lalu’s political career. He already stands convicted in one case and is currently on bail.    

Though Arvind Kejriwal is yet to be formally charged in a case of corruption, the AAP boss and the Delhi Chief Minister will find it hard to escape prosecution should they carry out an independent investigation into the PWD scandal. The main beneficiary, one S K  Bansal,  is Kejriwal’s brother-in-law. Not only did he enjoy free access to the chief minister’s home and office, but, worse, he is said to have exploited that connection to extract contracts and money from the Delhi PWD. As per an audit report,  the assigned works were either not completed or done most shoddily.   Earlier, yet another relative of Kejriwal was appointed in a key position in the Health Ministry in violation of rules and procedures. 
 
Some people might find it unfair to bracket Lalu and Kejriwal together, but,  it should be recalled,  both are products of anti-corruption movements. The RJD boss too had evoked much hope when as a student leader back in the 70s he had jumped on the `Total Revolution’ bandwagon of Jayaprakash Narayan.  

He was handpicked by JP to contest the post-Emergency Lok Sabha poll. Soon, he got sucked into the corrupt-criminal culture of Bihar politics. So much so, Home Minister  Charan Singh refused to appoint him the head of the youth wing of the Janta Party, saying that after dusk he could be found `lying drunk in some drain or the other in North Avenue’, the row of flats next to Rashtrapati Bhawan meant for new MPs. 

The anti-corruption bandwagon of Anna Hazare served as the platform for Kejriwal to launch himself full time into politics. Though an indifferent civil servant all through, he did not quit till he became eligible for a pension,  a considerable sum indeed.  

Lalu’s career got a huge boost in the post-Mandal phase.  Kejriwal exploited the anti-Congress mood following a series of humongous corruption scams. Once the Janata Government was formed, little was heard of JP. 

Likewise, once Delhi gave Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party an unprecedented 67 seats out of 70 in the  Assembly,  they stopped paying even lip-service to Hazare. Kejriwal was now the lord and master of Delhi who brooked no challenge from within or without. 

AAP was now his private fief, to be run as he pleased. So, if Lalu carved his own party in his own image, bringing in brother-in-law Sadhu Yadav and others from the extended clan, Kejriwal ejected out Prashant Bhushans and Yogendra Yadavs and got himself a durbar of Ashish Khetans and Raghav Chadhas, Ashutoshs and Sanjay Singhs. He had no equals,  though a  former colleague from the  Ford Foundation-funded NGO, Manish Sisodia, was accorded a  place higher than the rest of the caboodle for obvious reasons.

Indeed, even Dilip Pandey, a factotum attached with the same NGO, was shown consideration as against the entire lot that had joined the party swayed by the Anna fast. 

Soon, the AAP began to unravel. At least, Lalu had the sense to keep his ambitions in check. Not Kejriwal. He now handed Delhi to Sisodia, freeing himself to spread the Kejriwal cult throughout the country. Delhi taxpayers’ money was used to popularise the Kejriwal brand in Chennai and Mumbai, Bhubaneshwar and Chandigarh. Naysayers were branded agents of Modi.  All the while `krantikari patrakars’ in television channels fueled the Kejriwal ambition, hoping to be rewarded when he conquered fresh territory. 

But the voter had other ideas. Lalu at least could count on Yadavs to stand by him despite his corruption and criminality. In the case of Kejriwal,  once the façade of transparency and incorruptibility was torn aside following daily reports of misuse of power for self- aggrandisement,  there was nothing to fall back on. A media creation, he now faced an existentialist threat, notwithstanding remnants of support from the original media fawners who had gone so overboard in Kejriwal-bhakti that regaining independence would prove difficult.  

In the first flush of his stupendous victory, the media ignored Kejriwal’s stupidities. Such as the appointment of as many as 21 parliamentary secretaries, a four-fold increase in the salary and perks of MLAs, out-of-turn appointments of durbaris and allotment of sarkari houses to them, a childish  refusal  to respect  the well laid-out  norms and procedures of conducting the business of the NCT Government,  a wholly avoidable fight with the Lt. Governor and the daily abuse of Modi, etc., etc.    Kejriwal seemed to believe that the people were gullible enough to treat him as a saint  ---  because like Lalu he affected a show of being an aam aadmi   ---     while they considered every other politician a crook.  Now, as the results in Goa, Punjab and Delhi testify, people think rather poorly of this charade called Kejriwal.        

Meanwhile, the woes of AAP underline an important truth of Indian politics. At its heart, it remains a dirty business, reflecting the collective character of us Indians.  Though it is wrong to argue that only politicians are crooks, while everyone else outside of politics is a saint, politics is the only career-choice which is directly linked to accountability and transparency. A crooked businessman can reach the crescendo of success without anyone lifting his little finger, but a politician must necessarily operate under constant public watch and be ready to pay the price for breaching the moral and legal codes. 

Kejriwal came on the promise of clean politics. He finds himself in trouble because he embraced greed and practised the most unprincipled and opportunistic politics, treating people as fools to be hoodwinked with promises of honesty and selfless service while fattening the bank balances of relatives and friends.  His comeuppance is well-deserved, though it has come much earlier than most people might have believed. Lalu the politician was lucky to have lasted several decades and might still hand over the RJD to his children. No such luck for  AAP. It will sink with Kejri.    

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    ​Saffron short-cuts to riches 

Not unlike Kejriwal, the mask of another anti-corruption crusader, Baba Ramdev, too might be slipping. Having  parlayed his initial public persona as a yoga guru  to found a multi-crore empire, selling everything from toothpaste to skin whiteners with a whole variety of  food items thrown in the wide mix,  there are now valid  concerns about the quality of the stuff marketed by Patanjali Ayurved Ltd.  A few weeks ago, the Central Food Lab in Kolkata found the much-ballyhooed Amla juice to be “ unfit for human consumption.”  Any other company would have immediately withdrawn the questionable product, but not so Ramdev’s Patanjali. Immediately, it nixed the Kolkata lab findings, arguing that Amla juice   --- can you believe it? --- was a `medicinal product,’  and, thus, not liable to meet the standards required of food items.   One would have thought being a saffron-robed yoga guru, Ramdev would voluntarily set a higher standard for  Patanjali than even the foreign multinationals operating in the FMCG sector in the country. 
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   ​ Governments change, dalals don’t                            

The recent disclosures of the underhand property deals of Lalu Yadav’s family have once again highlighted the fact that though regimes may come and go but the power- brokers carry on undisturbed.  For, the dalals who helped convert black money into white so that Lalu’s children could, on record, own plush farm houses in South Delhi were the ones who had earlier been associated with the UPA leaders. In particular, there was one who had monopolised the issuance of vehicle registration plates during the time Shiela Dikshit was the chief minister and had subsequently gained proximity to then Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee. He is reported to have helped launder illicit cash for Lalu’s daughter Misa Devi and her husband so that the couple could register in their own names a sprawling farm house in Sainik Farms in South Delhi. 
 

Virendra Kapoor is a Delhi-based journalist. The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not reflect the view of Asianet Newsable