By Mayank Jain:
“That which is given with pride and ostentation is rather an ambition than a bounty.”- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
What do you do when you have the chief minister of the national capital disrupting the organization of his own city and sitting outside the home ministry to protest? Yes, the chief minister is on the road to protest and no matter how counter intuitive that sounds, but Delhi has been facing the same for quite a while now.
Finding it hard to differentiate between welfare and populism as well as activism and governance, AAP is turning out to be more bad than good for the city. While the Law Minister himself paid no heed to the law of the land or the governance procedure and went on to raid Khirkee Extension, claiming it was against ‘prostitution’; the government is backing him up like he is the harbinger of all things good in Delhi.
The protest in Delhi has hijacked not only the attention of news and media but the police as well. As many as 1200 policemen had to be deployed to ensure safety at the venue, and the Rapid Action Force also had to be called in when the protesters got into trouble with Delhi Police. The party is demanding suspension of the six police officers who didn’t give in to Somnath Bharti’s wish to do a late night raid in a south Delhi colony where he suspected a ‘drug and sex racket’. Criminal jurisprudence states that it is illegal to raid after night without a warrant or to harass women without any authority but the party and the chief minister continue to back the law minister while slamming Delhi Police for being ‘incompetent’.
However good his intentions are, Arvind Kejriwal must understand that life as an activist is very different from life as a policy maker and if the CM is out on the roads protesting against the Home Ministry then who will take care of the city’s matters which require more immediate attention. The right way to governance is by following procedures and not taking law in your own hands; but right now they are doing everything unlawfully and yet vehemently defending it because they supposedly “promised safety of women in their manifesto”.
The capital city is the seat of central government. Such high-profile protests only make life difficult for the common man as well as other ministers of the country as the roads have been hijacked and speeches are being delivered from makeshift daises. Section 144 has already been imposed until Wednesday in the whole periphery of parliament and North Block but the chief minister didn’t pay any heed to the same and flouted the law himself along with many volunteers to protest for ‘better law and order’.
No matter how bad the state of Delhi currently is, no amount of criticism can justify this mode of governance where anarchist tendencies rule the road and mob is the ruler. One can never expect a free and fair view of the situation where anything that the law minister feels is wrong deserves to be raided without warrant and the chief minister is himself busy breaking laws. This is just not what we all signed up for.
Why so much hurry? Nobody is asking the party to leave the throne tomorrow yet they look hell-bent on turning the world upside down in a single day. Surely, it is the job of the government to ensure law and order in the city but it is not their job to get on the streets if anything goes wrong as per their perception. Things might take an ugly turn if the chief minister fails to calm down his party and takes decisions by weighing pros and cons instead of going by populism and raising his popularity quotient by carrying his files to the protest site and working there. Its ostentation and eyewash at best.
Agreed that they promised us a corruption free government but was the vigilantism and reactionary methods that are being resorted to mentioned in the manifesto?