Editorial, AT LAST, AAM AADMI, in LAW ANIMATED WORLD, 31 December 2013 , Vol. 9, Part 2, No. 24 issue.

AT LAST, AAM AADMI

- the common man, with flamboyant Arvind Kejriwal as his honest and rightful representative, has entered the portals of power in Delhi – the capital city state – with his broomstick and let us hope he would be able to sweep away at least some cobwebs of corruption, nepotism, favoritism and bureaucratic arrogance, opacity and injustices accumulated in government chambers therein. Not that such feats were not achieved by others in our country earlier. In our own state the cine star N.T. Rama Rao had, within 9 months of formation of his party, with overwhelming public support, trounced the entrenched Congress Party. Prior to that, in Tamil Nadu, MGR and still earlier the DMK led by Annadurai emerged triumphant on the strength of popular movements and admiration. In Assam the AASU that conducted a protracted struggle for Assamese rights formed a front and won the elections spectacularly. And we saw how Janata Party under Jayaprakash Narayan had stubbornly resisted emergency authoritarian rule and gained a great victory. But here perhaps for the first time a party has canvassed solely on an anti-corruption platform, remained secular and at every step has been consulting the people in development and election campaigns. This is really a welcome trend in Indian politics and creates a glowing hope that a new breed of young, dedicated, honest persons will rise from the ranks of people and try to build a corruption-free, prosperous People’s India as dreamt by innumerable revolutionaries like Bhagat Singh and Azad who sacrificed their lives for the cause of the country. It is pertinent to quote Roosevelt here – “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” Hope Arvind stands up to the description of such a ‘Man in the Arena’. §§§