Being Aam Aadmi

In the run-up to the recently concluded Delhi Assembly Elections many personal allegations made their way onto national media. Some of them utterly nonsensical while others made a little sense although their relevance in an election campaign was questionable.

Once such issue that cropped up was that Arvind Kejriwal who always made a hue and cry about being an Aam Aadmi and denounced other politicians for being Elitist and pro-capitalists totally ignoring the majority population and favouring the few Khaas Aadmi. To make his point he even travelled in Delhi Metro on the way to his inauguration ceremony, refused security cover and to a certain extent endorsed a somewhat messed-up ‘fashion- statement’ resembling more of a rickshawala (although I don’t mean to imply that dressing like that is deplorable, but well at certain times it didn’t meet the dress code of the event he was attending). But all things aside, he made his version of Aam Aadmi into a very successful brand, successful enough to get him almost 96% of assembly seats in the Delhi Assembly.

Now while unveiling one of the faces of his Aam Aadmi, he had attacked other politicians who travelled by charter planes and business classes devoid of any empathy for the poor. Now when a photo of Mr Kejriwal flying business class made its way onto the media, everyone at the political scene made a torrent of accusations against him for being the hypocrite of the highest order.

This is a classic example how ghosts of your own faulty political stand can haunt you. Although I didn’t make much dent on his political fortunes as people generally felt that everyone was just expecting too much of ideal behaviour from this guy.

But I would like to ask Mr Kejriwal or anyone of his spokesperson how can they justify this flip-flop in ideology?

Actually the answer lies in a simple observation of our social ecosystem. All of us identify ourselves with the ideal Aam Aadmi, paying his taxes, living a simple life, oppressed by system and working hard to make a mark. But at the same time everyone aspires to become the Khaas Aadmi, to be of some importance, to command respect in society.

This Aam Aadmi dreams of being rich someday, fly business class and live a life full of luxuries. Such an Aam Aadmi lives in a relatively small home but dreams of living in a big mansion the ones Ekta Kapoor shows on her daily soaps!

The key is not to denounce the rich and laud the poverty. What matters is to create more and more Khaas Aadmi who have a broad outlook towards the society. The current scene in India is that your prosperity depends on someone else’s misery. It is this perception that needs to be changed if we want a better India. A responsible Khaas Aadmi is more of an asset that a bunch of politically active but economically deprived Aam Aadmi.

Thus rather than deploring business class travel and the people with riches, Mr Kejriwal should focus more on how more and more Aam Aadmi can be elevated to being the Khaas Aadmi and it will be these responsible Indian citizens, having a vision that breaks all the economic and social barriers, who will lift the society in particular as well as India in general to unprecedented height.

Jai Hind.

P.S.: It was the wealthier of these Aam Aadmi that attended Mr Kejriwal’s expensive fund raiser dinners and in turn fuelled his campaign as well as his party. More of such politically active and economically empowered would help break the glass ceiling that separates ‘the rulers’ and ‘the ruled’ in India.