AC issue: Is Kejriwal becoming mature?

Barely had the clock struck noon on February 14, Arvind Kejriwal was sworn in as the Delhi chief minister for the second time. It took about 20 minutes for his other cabinet colleagues to take oath of office. After that, for the second time in 14 months, he kept the crowd at Delhi's massive Ramlila Grounds, and thousands more thanks to the television news channels, spellbound for about half-hour.

That Arvind Kejriwal is a very, very good speaker who uses everyday lingo and everyday analogies to speak about everyday issues affecting every other person you come across in public transport is not news. That Kejriwal comes across as a man of integrity, who appears to mean every word he utters, is also not a new observation. What was new this time was the maturity that he seemed to show in his speech. Mildly criticising the media for making an issue out of the official car and accommodation he took the last time, Kejriwal was clearer this time. The new government wants to end the VIP culture in Delhi, as no one likes roadblocks just because a minister is passing by. "Of course we will need cars but we will get rid of the lal batti," he said.

It sounded good that, as Kejriwal himself put it, the age of romanticism has had its time under the sun and rightly passed the ball on to pragmatism. It appeared good that the words "aam aadmi" and "aam aadmi sarkar" have finally, officially, been cleansed of the nonsense and joke it was turned into - that the aam aadmi is not the emaciated BPL card-holder waiting for PDS ration and government doles, and the sarkar of such people is not led by men and women, equally emaciated, who go around in thick-framed glasses, kurtas and chappals hiding their ideology. Like the grainy images from a Guru Dutt or Ritwik Ghatak film.

There was the obvious allusion that the aam aadmi is you and me. People who live in two- or three-BHK flats, drive a car, go on holidays, rejoice in taking selfies with celebrities, whine about income tax, rising prices and the oh-so-near-death blow rendered by the EMIs. The middle class, in other words.

So there you have it, the composition of the aam aadmi: The ten shades of poor, and the 50 variants of the middle class with all its hyphenated prefixes and suffixes: lower-middle, middle-middle, upper-lower-middle-middle, middle-lower-upper-upper, and so forth.

So imagine the inanity of that whole thing about experience of the high, low and wilderness teaching you the benefits of maturity and wisdom when within a month everyone starts fighting and moaning about everyone else in the party, the leader heading off for a ten-day medical session and returning amid more acrimony. And then, instead of the sane things he is supposed to say about the party, the administration and the governance model, wants the authorities to remove the air-conditioners from his new CM's residence.

Excuse me, you say? No need for that; you heard it right. Take off all the ACs. What was he trying to prove? That aam aadmis have no use for an AC? Nonsense. That aam aadmis cannot afford AC? Nonsense. That it's some sort of symbolism to appear closer to the poor? Perhaps. But if it is, it's a inane one.

Chances are, if you ask him, Kejriwal would probably say he does not use ACs; or it could even be due to a medical suggestion. But that's still not good enough reason for bothering the Public Works Department (PWD): 

1. As the department officials said, according to reports, it's not feasible since it would leave gaping holes in the wall, and they would have to work on filling up those holes. You don't need a rocket scientist to realise that. And Kejriwal went to IIT-Kharagpur.

2. But more than that, the sheer idea that you could bother government servants because they are, well, that - servants - and you could bother them is so feudal and wannabe-aristocratic. Broken down to the narrowest particle, what, pray, is the difference between the lal batti and getting something changed just because you don't like/want/need it? The same as the difference between bothering/harassing a couple of persons versus harassing a few hundred, if not thousand. But at the core of it, the operative words remain the same: bothering, or harassing.

3. Why would you want to take the ACs off, and then fill up the holes, and then, remove the fillers and put them back on when the next occupant of the bungalow comes along? In lay terms, that's called wasting resources.No wonder the PWD came up with the most realistic reply: sorry, can't be done. If you don't want them, don't use them.

This is a small instance. But then, these are only the early days. Barely a month since he was sworn in. And within those 30, he spent ten days undergoing naturopathy in Bangalore. February 14 is already appearing a short blast from the heady past.