Political New Wave in India – An Emerging Trend

 

The emergence of Aam Admi Party, its landslide victory in the Delhi elections is history now. Arvind Kejriwal’s victory is nothing short of a Bollywood cinema, where the dreams of a common man waiting for a political change are staged. We have seen quite a good number of arm chair political critics who always criticize the political system and the politicians, yet are reluctant to take up politics in their hands. They have also, so far, like every other, been waiting for a change than braving to be the change. In fact many in the AAP camp wouldn’t have imagined that they would be able to gain the public support to such a level.

The stupendous victory of AAP has clearly stated two things. One, people – especially the young India – want a change in the political arena and are ready to stand by the healthy changes in the system. Second, the current political climate seems to favour the long awaited third front. The need for a third front in the Indian polity has always been pondered over and every election season there have been talks about it. As there are no national parties other than the Congress and BJP (though we have the CPI it hasn’t emerged out successfully other than West Bengal and Kerala) always the third front is realized as the collaboration of the powerful state level parties.

The AAP’s victory has sent shock waves to the Congress and BJP camps and has been a pleasant surprise to many that seems to have kindled a ray of hope among the Indian intellects and technocrats. In public opinion politics in India is often compared to sewage system. Finally this victory has motivated them to fold their sleeves to clean the system. Perhaps the technocrats and intellects in India have thought for long that the people are often driven by the glitz of big political parties that they wouldn’t render their support to the independent candidates and those from new political parties. Hence they felt their duty gets fulfilled with critiquing politics.

 

Nandan Nilekani

 

The Delhi Assembly elections has disproved such thoughts, and the mind of the common man has been spoken loud and sound. This sounds to have initiated an ‘intellectual political new wave in India’.  Incidentally the founder of AAP Arvind Kejriwal himself is an IIT alumni who was working in Tata Steels quit his job to chase his dreams in civil services, who later entered politics. Nandan Nilekani, the Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, who had an illustrious career in Infosys, and now heading the Government of India’s technology committee, is said to eye on politics now.

 

Meera Sanyal

 

Meera Sanyal, the chair person of the Royal Bank of Scotland (India) has quit her job to join in Aam Admi Party. After she met Arvind back in may last, she was impressed by his idealism, which made her to campaign for AAP ahead of the Delhi Assembly elections with her husband.

 

Media reports have that V.Balakrishnan, the Chief Financial Officer, of Infosys Technologies has officially joined the AAP. He is at the top of the administrative ladder in the IT giant.

More recently a techie from Apple quit his job and has joined AAP. Adarsh Shastri may not sound familiar to many of us but when he is rightly introduced as the grandson of Lal Bhagadur Shastri, the former Indian Prime Minister, we instantly know him. Through his tweets we learn that he has been following the AAP for a while, and is satisfied about the moves it take. This has made this MBA graduate to end up his 17 years of corporate career and join AAP.

 

 

In his tweet to his followers he has thanked the people for their support and has said will try to keep up his grandfather’s name. While Arvind took oath as CM of Delhi, Shastri said, “Today Delhi has witnessed the beginning of a new era, transfer of power of the people to the people by the people, democracy has truly won.”

These highlighted examples in this article are very few. More technocrats and intellectuals who had so far ended their responsibility as sincere citizens just by voting and critiquing the political system have started to roll out their political dreams and their ambition might end up a boon to the country on the whole.