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Arvind Kejriwal
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- sgpl 13y agoFor those unfamiliar with the Indian political scene: Arvind Kejriwal is a rookie politician who defeated (three-time Chief Minister of Delhi) Sheila Dikshit in the Delhi Legislative Assembly elections (held today). He co-founded a political organization named Aam Aadmi Party (Translation: Common Man's Party) that won 28 of Delhi's 70 seats in its electoral debut, just 3 shy of BJP (an established National Party), and more than three times the no. of seats won by Indian National Congress (the incumbent party in Delhi). Relevant background information on Arvind Kejriwal [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvind_Kejriwal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvind_Kejriwal [Edit: corrected figures based on child comment]
- denzil_correa 13y ago> He co-founded a political organization named Aam Aadmi Party (Translation: Common Man Party) that won 27 of Delhi's 70 seats in its electoral debut, just 6 shy of BJP (an established National Party), and almost three times the no. of seats won by Indian National Congress (the incumbent party in Delhi). AAP won 38 seats and BJP won 30 [0] [0] http://eciresults.nic.in/PartyWiseResult.htm http://eciresults.nic.in/PartyWiseResult.htm
- adharmad 13y agoAAP (Aam aadmi party)'s performance is unprecedented for a 1-year old party taking on national parties that were 50-year old with far more money and resources. Its a stunning debut for the AAP!
- hrjet 13y agoPerhaps more relevant to HN, Arvind Kejriwal graduated from IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) which is somewhat analogous to MIT in the Indian context. He then joined the administrative services. So he is a techy turned bureaucrat, turned activist, turned politician.
- justplay 13y agoseeing this post in front page of HN clearly proves that it has many Indian users.
- dhaneshnm 13y agoMr. Kejriwal is by no means a "common man".He has a history in politics,though not in electoral politics. But I do agree that this election reminds scenes from some movies like "Nayak" and "Yuva". Overall a nice Article though :)
- CGudapati 13y agoI am very happy for Arvind. He could have been a millionaire while doing his IRS job. He left all that for his principles. He was maligned and constantly criticized. Still his party overcame all the hurdles. His rivals could afford funds(guess where they came from?) which are in orders of magnitude larger than his party's tiny 20 crores(less than budget of a Hindi movie). I wish nothing but best to him and hope he brings the change that India desperately needs.
- harichinnan 13y agocorrection: Not if he wanted to do it honestly. He would've become a millionaire only if he had taken bribes.
- navatux 13y agoHe is doing great..lets wish him all the best
- sreeni_ananth 13y agoCorruption is the main reason keeping India from being a developed country. Hope this guy brings the change India needs.
- jalayir 13y agoDefine corruption.
- wsxcde 13y agoNot really. India's problems are almost entirely due to colonialism. At independence, life expectancy was 30 years, literacy rate was 15% and the population was about 300 million and IIRC the avg per capita GDP was approx $300 in today's dollars. (If these numbers seem unbelievable, I suggest looking them up. They are easy to verify.) Combined with this, India inherited a dysfunctional governmental bureaucracy and law and order system which was aimed at preserving British control over India and not really do the actual job of governing the country. The founders did the best they could, and copied a bunch of seemingly good ideas from a bunch of western economies. This failed miserably because they overlooked the fact that western economies were fuelled by slavery, colonization, reckless industrialization and exploitation of natural resources. India doesn't have the natural resources like the US because there isn't any land left to be stolen. Exploiting colonial resources like the European powers is also out of the question. Bonded labourers etc. were (are?) present to some extent, but large-scale disenfranchisement and exploitation of entire demographics similar to the model used by westerners fifty or so years ago is not really tenable in today's world. The point is, it's now obvious that the western model was bound to fail, but unfortunately this wasn't obvious back in the 50s. It's only now that India is making visible progress towards the goal of development, but this is largely because of the ground work laid in the last 50 or so years in raising levels of education and healthcare (which of course still have quite a long way to improve) to a reasonable baseline.
- dataworx 13y agoI'm confused.. India's "dysfunctional governmental bureaucracy and law and order system... failed miserably" because it was cloned from the west. But you're also saying the government laid the groundwork over 50 years to raise levels of education and healthcare so that India is now making "visible progress". I don't think @sreeni_ananth's comment was discounting the role of colonialism, but rather looking at the way out. There's not much we can do now about what was done to India in the past (except maybe harboring ill will against 'the west'?). But looking to India's future, I'd have agree with him that the main issue standing in the path of India's full recovery and health is corruption.
- techaddict009 13y agoI am surpised to see "AAP" Aam Admi Parties name in CIA's website : https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2118.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/... (Check out India) You can see its clearly mentioned in the note that "India has dozens of national and regional political parties; only parties with four or more seats in the People's Assembly are listed" then how cam AAP is already there ?
- yati 13y agoI can see AITMC at #3
- techaddict009 13y agoSorry My Mistake Have edited above answer. But how can AAP be present in list. Election result got declared today and still they do not have even 1 assembly member (Signature are yet to be made. There is situation of reelection). AAP was in the list since so many days...
- accu 13y agoThey have been there since feb 2013 http://web.archive.org/web/20130227190135/https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2118.html http://web.archive.org/web/20130227190135/https://www.cia.go... this year. It looks like three scenarios are possible here. 1. Someone has a time machine. 2. Weed at work 3. Fishy fishy fishy
- prateek_mir 13y agoThis needed to be shared, thanks for putting in the effort ! [ I was thinking of writing a similar piece myself, but you just DID it ]
- jalan 13y agoThanks, indeed this needs to be shared. Glad you liked it.
- sanjkris 13y agoTheres actually 2 other HUGE winners in these Indian elections: 1. The Election Commission of India that galvanized 60-80% of the voters to turn out (normally its 30-40%). 70% women voter turnout. 90% 18-29 voter age turnout 2. Youth voters < 29 yrs of age India will see 500-600 mln voters turn out in May for the LokSabha elections. The US could learn 2 lessons from all this: 1. How a true democracy with 60% voter participation works 2. You can send a man to the moon but cant have a woman President. How do other countries integrate women politicians and why it works
- gameshot911 13y ago>You can send a man to the moon but cant have a woman President. That's not a fair critique at all. Had Barack Obama (first black president) not won, there's a very real possibility that Hillary Clinton would have been elected president. Both of which represent political firsts and a changing system towards greater integration.
- prateek_mir 13y agoThe case study of this party is kind of a Proof of Concept, if you will, showing that - 1. Elections can be fought with clean money, ( and the kind of donations that they received (in terms of quanta of individual contribution), where the mode should be well below 20$s per cap. makes it kind of a crowd funded campaign ) 2. The part that social media can play in mobilizing people and getting point across when traditional news media blacks you out. 3. Targeted manifestos, like targeted advertisements engage people more as compared to conventional 1-state-1-manifesto approach.. 4. That there is a space for clean politics. I am curious about how things will turn out for Delhi now, and for India in the coming LS elections.
- pratik661 13y agoThe case study should note that: The constituency of Delhi is: 1. More educated than the rest of the country 2. Has a higher level of income than the rest of the country 3. Generally more cosmopolitan than the rest of the country. I can provide sources for the first 2 if you would like. The third is debatable as the only evidence I have is anecdotal.
- vellasib 13y agoI'm assuming that the point your trying to make is that if AAP were to contest nationwide, they may not get the same response. Actually, I think the other way round. Take a look at the constituencies they won from. Many of them are constituencies which largely include lower incomes groups.
- arshedg 13y agoPoint 2 is wrong. Tripura and kerala are more educated(94.05 and 93.65), Delhi is only having 86.3%.
- pratik661 13y agoYou are correct. However, when I say "rest of the country", I mean national average. There are many parts of India that fare better than Delhi on a host of social indicators (ie. Kerala). That doesn't change my argument.
- linux_devil 13y agoHe belongs to state X(Haryana) and lives in state Y(U.P) and challenges 3 term chief minister of the Z(New Delhi) and wins . Political hack it is , sounds like proxies and socks in use.
- pavanky 13y agoDelhi is not a state. Indian politicians have contested in constituencies they have not resided for a very long time. Kejriwal hasn't done something new here.
- linux_devil 13y agoYes , but certainly with a debut and huge margin it's a big deal .
- chetanahuja 13y agoDelhi is a state for most practical purposes. from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delhi "A union territory, the political administration of the NCT of Delhi today more closely resembles that of a state of India, with its own legislature, high court and an executive council of ministers headed by a Chief Minister."
- dangoldin 13y agoWhat a timely post! I'm in Delhi now for a wedding and there's definitely a ton of celebration going on. Here's hoping this gets past the honeymoon phase and turns into something bigger.
- piyushpr134 13y agoFor those wondering why this is relevant to HN: AAP or Common man's party (translated literally) is like a crowdfunded startup. This guy is a rookie in politics who managed to get significant number of seats in this election using crowd funding(through AAP's website). AAP, in itself, is like a startup which is trying to completely disrupt an industry which has been in control of two parties(mostly) so far.
- linux_devil 13y agoIts just like crowd funded start-up who even stopped asking for funds when he had enough to fight for elections. Lot of Indians in India and other countries did help in donations. He was fighting from people's money for the people of the country . Fought election for first time and that too against veteran 15 year term serving chief minister and won.
- known 13y agoIndians are brainwashed to believe that 'voting in elections = democracy'. http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-12-07/news/44909513_1_kapil-sibal-democracy-true-meaning http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-12-07/news...
- linux_devil 13y agoarticle refer to famous political figure of ex-ruling party(INC) in Delhi , a person who challenged Arvind Kejriwal 1 year ago to come into politics and win , Arvind did win his first election . No one give ears to such speech and articles of such politician(Kapil Sibbal) .
- prateek_mir 13y agoIn-fact, It is the very same philosophy that AAP stands for, that 'voting in elections != democracy',
- primitivesuave 13y agoSome details for anyone who doesn't know about the systematic corruption in India: Suppose you are running a business that has to pay tax on something (excise tax, tariff, etc). Every month, you put together the amount of tax you have to pay, along with a fixed bribe of around 5000 rupees (approximately 85 dollars) on top. Obviously, if you don't pay the bribe, the IRS will fuck with you until you do pay the bribe, so you pay the bribe. The tax collector, along with collecting the calculated amount of taxes for each business, has to send 100,000 rupees to his boss every month. This is a fixed amount, the boss will usually not care how much the collector made in bribes as long as he gets his 100k. This boss will have to send 2,000,000 rupees to his boss, eventually culminating with the CM (Chief Minister) receiving a massive amount of bribe money each month. However, the CM does not keep all of this money. Because the CM is dependent on his political party to keep his job, he will send a large percentage of this money to the party fund (which is usually under his control). During election season, this money is used to blatantly trick/pay off people to guarantee more powerful status for the party, which inevitably leads to a more powerful position for whichever corrupt person is at the top of the food chain. Suppose you were an idealistic tax collector in this system of corruption, and one month you took some mushrooms or whatever and you decided you would no longer contribute bribes to the system of corruption. Your boss will not retaliate by having you killed or tortured, he/she will simply transfer you to a remote village with no electricity or running water. There, you will be hated by the villagers as the asshole tax collector. The mere prospect of uprooting one's family and lifestyle is more than any tax collector is willing to accept for the sake of idealism, so the systematic corruption continues, even today. So, as this article suggests, there might finally be a guy at the top who will end the corruption and improve the system of taxation. His background as a tax-collector-turned-activist provides him with a high level of credibility, and I'm sure he'll go very far.
- known 13y agoAAP is not scalable across India like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala