By Sidharth Mishra

Sometimes in the late 1990s a very enterprising Deputy Commissioner of Police of the North East district had conducted a survey on the social factors for the high rate of crime in the district. North-East district, in the pre-Metro days, was used to be most backward area consisting mostly of the shanty colonies.

The area was also known to be communally sensitive and on many occasions petty crimes led to communal flare ups. The survey carried out at the behest of the DCP showed a particular trend. Most of the crimes of snatching, loot and scuffle, sometimes catastrophic, happened between 7 pm and 9 pm.

This was the time when the wage earning residents of the shanty colonies returned home from work, in most of the cases carrying days’ earnings in cash. The area during this period also witnessed power cuts regularly allowing the crime to be committed, using the police lexicon, under the cover of darkness.

By Sidharth Mishra

This is the centenary year of Delhi University. Founded in 1922, the 100-years-old university for at least last five decades has been the leading centre of academics for both the under-graduate and the post-graduate programmes in the country. Till a few years back, the newspapers gave screaming headlines saying that even a 100 percent score in the qualifying examination could not ensure you a seat on the prestigious campus.

Last week, read a squirming headline in the inside pages of the newspapers. It mentioned that the university still had 6000 seats vacant in the under-graduate programmes. This means that the university has been unable to fill almost 10 percent of the seats allocated to it.

This scenario compares with the situation, where the private, self-financing being the more appropriate word,  education institutions count on their vacant seats and try and find the remedial measures to meet the financial losses which the untaken seats would accrue to. Financial losses are not necessarily interpreted in the terms of loss of profit but the availability of finances to meet the salary and the infrastructure bills.

By Sidharth Mishra

On the first working day of 2022, the city had witnessed a huge jam following the Bandh call given by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) protesting the implementation of the New Excise Policy. It was an indicator of the things to come, we all know what turn the New Excise Policy took, landing a Minister in jail and several named in the charge-sheet of what seems to be a humungous scam.

There are no aggressive indicators this time around and hopefully the city would be free of any jam on the first working day of the year. And if that happens, hopefully the city too witnesses a jam free year. This is quite possible as the same political party is now dominant force in both the state assembly and the municipal council.

However the famous English poet TS Eliot said, “… between the idea and the reality falls the shadow.”  Given the posturing by the two leading political parties of the city – The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), there would be continued jam in the smooth governance of the city. The blame game would continue and the city’s civic health would continue to suffer.

By Sidharth Mishra

If people in Delhi were awaiting a change in their lives following the results of the recent MCD polls, differently interpreted by different television channels, depending on their ideological loyalty, it was not going to happen. At least the uttering of the political people in the week after the elections do not give any indication for change.

Last week there was an unfortunate acid attack by stalkers on a school-going girl. The shameful incident was indication enough for the political motor mouths to once again get into a wordy duel. Aam Aadmi Party national spokesperson Saurabh Bharadwaj alleged that after the arrival of Delhi L-G V K Saxena, crimes have gone up in Delhi.  “L-G saab, you have Delhi Police with you and crimes are increasing every day. Instead of interfering in the work of the Delhi Government, you should concentrate on your work. After your arrival, crimes are increasing in Delhi,” he said in a tweet.

The other prominent face of the ruling party in Delhi government and now also in the municipal corporation, Swati Maliwal said, “Despite a ban, the chemical is as easy to purchase as vegetables.”  In a video uploaded on Twitter, Maliwal said “We have issued notice to the city police over the incident. The attackers should be arrested and given stringent punishment.”  The attackers have been arrested and the law would take its own course.

By Sidharth Mishra

There is this famous couplet from Bhakti era saint Kabirdas which says, “Duvidha mein dou gaye, na Maya mili na Ram (when in two minds you neither get world pleasures, nor spiritual salvation).” The recent attempt by Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal to emerge as rival of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has created somewhat similar situation for him.

The results of the assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh and that of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi clearly indicate that while there were not many takers for Kejriwal’s Hindu espousal, there was definite disenchantment in the minority community on the issue. The loss of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidates in the minority-dominated wards of Delhi are a clear indicator. If there was any doubt, lesson was learnt when AAP tried to poach on a few Muslim corporators from Congress, who were brow beaten back by the local populace.

By Sidharth Mishra

If there was one proposition of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) supremo Arvind Kejriwal, which was rejected lock, stock and barrel, it his claim that his party was ‘kattar imandar’ which when translated into English would be rabidly honest. Though there is no grammatical error in somebody being rabidly honest but language usage wise it’s like an oxymoron.

This attempt to repair the dent in AAP’s image of being an impeccably honest party has come a cropper. Its senior leaders, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, who is facing corruption charges in the liquor scam, transport minister Kailash Gahlot, who is in dock in a case of alleged swindling in purchase of buses, and jail minister Satyendra Jain, who ironically is incarcerated in money laundering case, were snubbed by the voters in their constituencies.

By Sidharth Mishra

One of the first reactions of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leadership on their performance in the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) polls has been that the people have rejected the corruption charges against its leaders Satyendra Jain and Manish Sisodia. Those who keenly follow politics of this country would recall that the discovery of fodder scam in Bihar did not really harm the political fortunes of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) strongman Lalu Prasad Yadav.

It took another decade before the RJD government was replaced by the NDA government led by Nitish Kumar in 2005. The vote against Lalu Yadav was not exactly against his acts of corruption but mal-governance and lack of development with Nitish Kumar promising ‘Sushashan’ (good governance). Despite Nitish bringing relatively cleaner and more efficient governance in Bihar, Lalu Yadav’s party did not go out of business.

Arvind Kejriwal’s party which had its genesis in the anti-corruption movement and its leaders claiming to not seek a share in the power structure, today has imprisoned ministers refusing to quit office despite being denied bail by the trial court and also the high court. This was something which the much-maligned Lalu Prasad Yadav also did not indulge in when he was arrested in the fodder scam case.

By Sidharth Mishra

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has lost an election which for it was to win. The is how the results of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) polls could be summed up on one line. The poor turnout of voters in the first place had indicated towards BJP being pushed onto the backfoot.

More than the anti-incumbency of 15 years, it has been lack of credible leadership at the state level which has harmed the saffron party in the national Capital more than any other factor. From a very dominant performance during the assembly election held in February 2020, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was engaged by the BJP in a cliffhanger in the MCD polls, the latter could have carried the day provided they had a face to project.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi cannot be the sole currency for the party to monetise its performance at every tier of our democratic set-up. BJP’s experiments with the regional and caste votes without a credible face has failed them now in two consequent elections.