Just a few weeks ago the field was clear with no opposition in sight.
Bharatiya Janata Party and its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi were
riding high as the Congress was unable to mount a challenge weighed down by
allegations of massive corruption, misgovernance, policy paralysis, weak
leadership and electoral debacles. The battle seemed to be going Modi's way even
before the bugle had been sounded.
As the BJP had already decided to turn the elections into a presidential form
by putting all its money on Modi and Congress nowhere in the fray, a political
greenhorn with a shrewd intellect decided that there should be no one way
traffic.
This man, who caught India's imagination during the Lokpal agitation by Anna
Hazare in 2011, had already stunned the political class and pundits alike with
his party's superlative performance in Delhi Assembly elections just three
months back.
With Congress not challenging Modi directly, Kejriwal has
found the perfect setting to aim at the biggest available target.
After decimating the Congress and puncturing BJP's march in Delhi,
bureaucrat-turned-social activist-turned-politician Arvind Kejriwal went on to
become the city-state's youngest chief minister, albeit for just
controversy-filled 49 days. Yet, the massive support for his Aam Aadmi Party and
his brief stint with power convinced him that he was ready for the big battle of
Lok Sabha elections.
Not known to shy away from taking an adversary head on, Kejriwal had in the
Delhi elections humiliated incumbent chief Minister and Congress stalwart in her
bastion of New Delhi by 25,864 votes. With Congress struggling to find enough
candidates to contest and challenge the BJP, Kejriwal has once again decided to
play for the maximum.
Even as Modi and the BJP have been targeting Congress's biggest leaders -
Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia - it is Kejriwal who has gunned for Modi.
Without batting an eyelid, the maverick Kejriwal announced he would contest
against Modi from whichever seat the BJP leader decided to try his luck from.
In one stroke and statement he has become the biggest talking point even as
BJP dismissed him as another wannabe who wanted his two minutes of frame. But
Kejriwal completes the presidential election paradigm perfectly.
With Congress not willing to challenge Modi directly, Kejriwal has found the
perfect setting to take aim at the biggest available target. After BJP announced
that Modi would contest from the holy city of Varanasi in eastern Uttar Pradesh,
Kejriwal too said that he would go to the city and decided after taking into
account the people's views, a strategy employed by the AAP with great success in
Delhi.
In the last few weeks, Kejriwal has been to Gujarat claiming that the state
was not as developed or corruption-free as claimed by Modi. In rallies after
rallies, Kejriwal has taken of Modi and tried to find loopholes in his claims.
He has gone on record to state that India needs a much better choice that Modi
and Rahul Gandhi.
From 2002 riots to the Gujarat model of development to his stand and reported
closeness to big business groups, Kejriwal has used every available opportunity
and ammunition to target Modi. In fact the belligerent Kejriwal has even
targeted the media for what he called was its pro-Modi stance.
On one side is Modi, a leader who has won three consecutive state elections
and has propelled his state on the path of development, while Kejriwal has
already rewritten the rules of the game much to the discomfort of the
established players even though he heads a party of political novices.
Indian electorate in known to be extremely finicky and takes into account
several factors like caste and community apart from local emotive issues.
Kejriwal literally swept Congress out of power from Delhi focussing on
inaccessible, insensitive administration and corruption. Now he hopes to
replicate the same during Lok Sabha elections even as it is a proverbial David
vs Goliath battle with a 1.5 years old party of volunteers pitted against a
strong cadre driven organisation with some of the tallest political leaders of
the country.
And Kejriwal is eyeing the giant slayer tag once again even if the odds are
much higher this time.
Indian techies in Silicon Valley
turn angel investors for Arvind Kejriwal
By Indu Nandakumar, ET Bureau | 20
Mar, 2014, 06.27AM IST
69 comments |Post a Comment
From a handful of engineers last
July, the AAP volunteer group in San Francisco now has over 200 members. Its
core technology team in the US has a team of 10.
SAN FRANCISCO: They may be a
world away, but that hasn't prevented Indian techies in the Silicon Valley from pitching in
with their efforts for the new kid in politics, Aam Aadmi Party.
Sold on the
promise of honest politics by its founder Arvind Kejriwal, hundreds of
Indians in the Valley are contributing to the party's growth with what they are
best at—building technology systems and platforms.
"People in the Valley
jumped at the opportunity as they have seen how the western world has changed,
and that change is possible (in India) because of technology," said Pran Kurup,
a Valleybased AAP volunteer and CEO of elearning firm Vitalect. Most of them
joined AAP after its debut in the Delhi assembly elections.
Some
members have quit jobs
In the assembly elections, it had stunned
even veteran pollsters by winning a sizeable chunk of the seats and Kejriwal, a
former taxman, became the chief minister of Delhi.
While this is not the
first time that political parties have cultivated a support base abroad, AAP has
managed to attract huge interest within a short time. Older political parties,
such as the BJP, enjoy a much larger support but it is concentrated mostly among
those who moved to the US much earlier.
The AAP volunteers have so far
built back-end software systems and organised virtual meetups. Some have even
quit their wellpaying jobs and returned to campaign full-time for the
party.
"When AAP announced the first set of candidates for Lok Sabha elections last month, the Silicon Valley team
was in charge of technology, which involved updating the party website with
photographs, descriptions and adding all this into a central database," said
Kurup, who develops digital content for the party.
From a handful of
engineers last July, the AAP volunteer group in San Francisco now has over 200
members. Its core technology team in the US has a team of 10. The party, whose
symbol is the broom, depends on free, open-source software due to its shoestring
budget.
In contrast, the BJP and Congress are said to have spent hundreds of crores to
outsource their technology and digital marketing work. Mohanraj ThirumalaiBSE -0.23 %, a systems manager at
the University of Alabama in BirminghamBSE 0.00 %, is part of the
Valley-based team that is currently developing a policy feedback forum for the
AAP website.
The forum, which will soon be rolled out nationally, will
let internet users cast their vote on different policy matters, after which the
top views and suggestions will be reviewed by the leadership.
"The good
thing is that the party does not differentiate between NRIs and Indians. There's
constant communication between the Delhi team and tech developers in the
Valley," said Thirumalai, who was part of a team that built the social media
trend analysis system for AAP during the assembly polls.
His team later
developed a system that keeps track of donations from abroad. "The only problem
is that due to budget constraints we are unable to use external applications and
everything has to be built internally." A few have also jumped into the rough
and tumble of electioneering.
Maya Vishwakarma, organiser of the AAP San
Francisco Bay Area volunteer network, is the party's candidate for Hoshangabad
in Madhya Pradesh.
