Wake up India for cough syrup with Arvind Kejriwal

Well that is a rip-off from a popular epigram being circulated on the Whatsapp owing to Kejriwal being seen always as a public figure coughing in cold and wrapping himself in a muffler all through winter like a true common man of yesteryear, but if creator of the Common Man cartoon R K Laxman had lived for a few more days, he would have seen the common man of his paper indeed inheriting the earth of Delhi.

But Kejriwal is no common man perhaps.

The man of the moment in Indian politics whose feat in winning the Delhi elections by capturing 67 of the 70 seats have stunned even his own supporters, is often referred to as a product of the Anna Hazare movement against corruption and in demand of the Jan Lokpal Bill to root out corruption in high places. But if the events of the last few years, since the natural death of the Anna movement, is any indicator, Kejriwal actually had struggled to conquer.

In the journey, he lost friends, with many turning into foes and his unforgiving critics, and even for several months lost the trust of the people for whom he vowed a corruption free government, but at the end it was his deep conviction and the course correction  that won him Delhi.

Kejriwal in Indian politics is like a bolt from the blue that now has put a brake into the inexorable journey of popularity that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was enjoying. Suddenly he took the shine away from the spotlight that Modi (to whom he lost in the Varanasi Lok Sabha polls) had been enjoying since his win in Lok Sabha polls last year.

After he resigned as the Chief Minister serving for 49 days in Delhi in Feb 2013, over the Jan Lokpal Bill issue (anti-corruption ombudsman bill), many had written off Kejriwal. But he made a comeback which is not only heroic but also historic. Winning 67 of the 70 seats was perhaps an achievement no one had imagined, or could easily better in future.

The rise of Kejriwal the politician is no less a baptism by fire. He at one point was seen as a symbol of negative politics, especially after he sat on a dharna as a chief minister in Delhi and quit as the CM in early 2014.

But Kejriwal remained true to his conviction and as political analyst Ashis Nandy pointed out on a TV show, he is one South Asian leader who has one foot in government and another out of it.

So he was not afraid of creating a political firestorm, when he targetted the Congress first family laying before people the undervalued property deals of party chief Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra with the realty company DLF, alleging the latter made hundreds of crores in return of government favours to the firm.

Kejriwal made a big issue of scams connected to electricity and water supply in New Delhi.

He also claimed to have exposed 'evidence of connivance' between the then Sheila Dikshit-led Delhi government and private power distribution companies.

Kejriwal stirred a storm in the political galaxy as he started levelling corruption charges against several top brass quite regularly in the past years.

In his series of allegations, Kejriwal’s first target was  Robert Vadra. Kejriwal “exposed” nexus between Vadra and the Haryana government and real-estate firm DLF. Kejriwal then targeted BJP president Nitin Gadkari and "exposed" a nexus between the political leader and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) ruling the coalition government in Maharashtra.

The social activist turned politician fought a pitched political battle against External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid over charges of embezzlement brought against the Congress leader’s charity trust.

Kejriwal also targeted industrialists Mukesh and Anil Ambani -and Jet Airways owner Naresh Goyal, in his series of high profile corruption and financial impropriety ‘exposes’ and accused them of holding Swiss bank accounts with black money deposits.

The AAP architect did not spare  Narendra Modi either, alleging that Modi favoured Adani group by manipulating bids on power purchase and also bought peace with Congress and judiciary on the acts by doling out sops in forms of lands.

But from his one scam a week expose to maturing as a politician after the exit from power in Delhi, has been quite an uphill task. He had taken on the high and mighty of India, and Modi himself called him an anarchist likening him to the Maoists living in the jungles. But it is a course correction and his assurance to the people of Delhi that he will not run away again that brought him back. Delhi chose to give Arvind Kejriwal a second chance.

Born on Aug 16, 1968  in a middle-class family in Siwani, Bhiwani district of Haryana, Arvind Kejriwal is an IITian. He is a Mechanical Engineering graduate of the ivy league Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, and worked for the Indian Revenue Service (IRS) as a Joint Commissioner in the Income Tax Department.  Arvind Kejriwal is married to Sunita, his batch mate from National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie and the National Academy of Direct Taxes in Nagpur. They have two children.

A friend recently recalled on a TV interview, that he was a huge Madhuri Dixit fan as an IITian and had watched her 1988 film Tezaab again and again for the song and dance number Ek Do Teen.  

But even before the Anna movement started in 2011-2012, Kejriwal was in social work. In 2006, he was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership recognising his involvement in a grassroots movement Parivartan using right-to-information legislation in a campaign against corruption.

He quit his job the same year and used the award money as a corpus fund to found the NGO, Public Cause Research Foundation.

In 2012, he launched the Aam Aadmi Party and defeated Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit in the 2013 Delhi Legislative Assembly election. Though he became a CM on Dec 28, 2013 with Congress support, he resigned 49 days later on Feb 14 2014 for apparently failing to pass the anti-corruption legislation- Jan Lokpal- since no party was ready to support him.

But the Muffler Man, as he is referred to often for wrapping the muffler, remained a symbol of Aam Aadmi of Delhi who chose to give him a second chance finally.