By Sidharth Mishra
The joke in the town is that Lord Rama has accepted prayers of Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal as the high-speed winds somewhat cleared smog in Delhi a day after Diwali. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal with his wife and cabinet colleagues had offered prayers at the replica of Ayodhya Ram Mandir built at Thyagraj Stadium in Delhi. The event was preceded by the usual publicity blitzkrieg and people urged to witness the event live.
That Kejriwal could have prayed for clean air in Delhi is unlikely, as the whole exercise is projected towards gearing up the preparations of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the upcoming assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh. It’s part of Kejriwal’s bouquet to entice voters of UP with his Ram Bhakti, which includes free trips to the citizens of Delhi to Ayodhya.
Kejriwal had earlier visited Ramjanambhoomi and Hanumangarhi in Ayodhya to reiterate his Ram Bhakti not being of any lesser degree than that of the BJP leaders. Incidentally, on the evening Kejriwal went live with his prayers at Ram Temple in Thaygraj stadium, at least 12000 families in Delhi were forced to live with a ‘Black Diwali’.
The 12 Delhi University colleges funded by Delhi Government has not been paid salary for the past six-months and most of the employees of these colleges are now living on borrowed funds. The non-disbursement of salary is all set to become a major issue in the upcoming Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA) polls, since the ruling combine of Democratic Teachers Association and Academics for Action and Development claim to be ideologically aligned to AAP and have thus raised the issue only cosmetically.
Talking of ideology, one is reminded of a book published in New York in 1962, titled, End of Ideology. It was a collection of essays edited by Daniel Bell, who described himself as a “socialist in economics, a liberal in politics, and a conservative in culture.” He predicted that the older, grand-humanistic ideologies derived from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries would be exhausted and that political ideology would become irrelevant among ‘sensible’ people.
There could not be a better amplification of the thought than the justification which prominent AAP face Atishi Marlena gave for the Ram Temple replica. Born to Marxist parents, both teachers at Delhi University who named her after Marx and Lenin (Marlena), Atishi when asked by mediapersons about the replica, justified use of tax-payers money as an attempt by the government to celebrate Diwali with the people.
A party which came to power ‘fighting’ for people’s rights, and claimed it to be their ideology, is today best known for splurging people’s money on its publicity through publicity events. The best example of the same is ‘Yudh Pradushan Ke Virudh’ (war against pollution) campaign of the Delhi government which has come a complete cropper.
Delhi registered the worst post-Diwali pollution spike in five years. Obviously on Diwali night the much-publicised and the much-hyped smog towers set-up by the Delhi government failed to play any role, at least that’s what the news reports suggest.
In 2014, following the Arab springs and similar peoples’ movements in other countries, Francis Fukuyama, the author of ‘The End of History and the Last Man’ stated that the biggest problem for the democratically elected governments in some countries was not ideological but “their failure to provide the substance of what people want from government: personal security, shared economic growth and the basic public services.”
Building of the replica of the Ram Temple at a sports stadium would certainly not stand scrutiny of Fukuyama of elected governments. It’s probably time for Fukuyama to update his 2014 work, ‘Political order and political decay’.
(The writer is an author and President, Centre for Reforms, Development & Justice)
