Why must Delhi taxpayers fund Arvind Kejriwal's national ambitions?

Arvind Kejriwal is a man who is loved as well as reviled in extreme measure. The supporters and critics trade hyperbolic barbs that is more in the nature of speaking at each other than speaking to each other. A nuanced and fair evaluation of his actions becomes a casualty in this rhetorical exchange. Same has been the case with his overzealous publicity funded from government coffers. It has been derided a lot by AAP critics without much effort at nuancing this criticism.

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But the advertisment spending is examined with nuances it seriously puts a question mark over Kejriwal's whole claim of being in politics to change things for good. Not just that it borders on being a scam. So below we examine why Kejriwal's excessive publicity is so objectionable:

Delhi taxed 

Kejriwal's over-the-top advertisement has not been restricted to Delhi. Delhi government is regularly taking out ads blowing the trumpet about its achievements, small and big, in media outside the NCR. This abuse of taxpayers money is done to realise Kejriwal's national ambition. Now why should Delhi taxpayer be forced to shell out his hard-earned money so that Kejriwal can leave Delhi for greener pastures?

This sort of political misuse of taxpayer money undermines taxpayers' cooperation with government as they have less faith in proper use of their money.This leads to more tax evasion. After all why should BJP supporters in Delhi pay taxes only to have it used for the petty political gains of rival political group? The government has the right to tax so that it can serve public interest and not private political interest. If the government does so it is indulging in a political corruption that lack of effective norms and safeguards on use of public money allows it to engage in without legal cost.

Insatiable hunger for publicity

Kejriwal critics often accuse him of being publicity-hungry because he always manages to remain in news through his theatrics. But his supporters have a point when they assert he only manages to do better what his opponents only aspire to - get the public's eyes and ears. So why then does he still need to spend crores of taxpayers money on publicising himself?

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So when this excessive taxpayer-funded publicity is seen in combination with his news-cycle tailored actions, Kejriwal emerges as a politician with an insatiable hunger for publicity. Not for him the self-elusive and below-the-radar functioning that Indians admire about leaders such as Lal Bahadur Shastri.

This unmatched hunger for publicity is harmful in many ways. It leads to playing to the gallery rather than taking principled positions. It also leads to a short sightedness as his actions are decided by public mood and prejudices which are capricious.

Poor governance 

In economics 101, it's taught how taxation leads to deadwood loss for producers and consumers and therefore should be resorted to only if the tax money is spent with a high multiplier. In case of partisan political advertisements, this multiplier on tax spending is negligible and hence economically very imprudent. So Kejriwal's over-the-top advertisements are not just morally obnoxious, they are a good example of bad economic policy.

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In a nation where our governments are unable to deliver so many important duties because of paucity of funds, such abuse of taxpayer money borders on being criminal. It exposes the misguided priority of Kejriwal government. It does not have the money to feed the hungry children or quench the thirst of thirsty slum-dwellers, and yet it has crores to spend on its self promotion?

Kejriwal promised to be the messiah of the aam aadmi. Is this how, by putting self publicity over fulfillment of basic needs of the common man, he is going to fulfill that promise?

Manipulation of media

Kejriwal has often cried about the absence of free media in the past. An important reason for this is media's dependence on government ads. But after gaining power he has himself perpetuated this policy of controlling media through ad spending. He has continued with the system of discretion-based allocation of ads rather than eliminating discretion.

His excessive spending on advertorials provides him an important leverage over media groups and hence belies his earlier promise of fighting for free and fair media.

Personality cult 

Another problem with the advertisements that the Delhi people have been subjected to is that they are overtly political and do not conform to basic norms that is adhered to by even the traditional parties. He has used Delhi government ads for directly targeting the central goverment. If the central government were to respond similarly and this confrontational model is copied by other states, then our already significant misuse of public funds will become even more problematic.

Also his ads create a personality cult around him. This use of taxpayers money for a person's benefit is ill at ease with democratic norms. It is more the stuff of self-indulgent authoritarian leaders like Kum Jong-un than of someone who truly believes in democratic values.

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This promotion of personality cult and advertisements of overtly politically biased agenda are not how politics of change can happen.

In fact, in his unabashed misuse of public money for his own publicity, Kejriwal is seriously testing the limits of law. In any developed country, this would have been a scam for which he would have been forced to step down (just this fortnight, Dilma Rousseff, Brazil's former president, was impeached on allegations of budget mismanagement). Luckily for Kejriwal, Indian politics has not seen the change he promised to herald, otherwise in a case of abundant irony, this kind of political corruption would have taken its toll on the erstwhile anti-corruption warrior.

Kejriwal's corrupt use of public money for his own promotion once again proves that the best of preachers are the worst of offenders.