[In a
stormy, televised confrontation, police officials refused Mr. Bharti’s demand
that officers enter the house, saying they did not have a search warrant or
sufficient backup. The police later said the tests showed no evidence that the
women had used narcotics. But Mr. Kejriwal sided so staunchly with his minister
that he has demanded the officers involved be suspended, threatening to begin a
sit-in on Monday outside the office of the minister who oversees the city
police.]
By
Ellen Barry
 |
| Protesters from a New Delhi teachers’ union last Thursday demanded an increase in wages. Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times |
NEW
DELHI — You could hardly blame Arvind Kejriwal, Delhi’s new chief executive,
for looking dour as he drove to work this week, barely 20 days after his
anticorruption Aam Aadmi, or Common Man, party upended Indian politics and took
control of one of the world’s most populous cities.
Mr.
Kejriwal made the commute in his battered compact car, from his old apartment
in a middle-class housing block on the eastern edge of Delhi, eschewing, as he
had promised during his campaign, the luxurious perks that usually come with
elected office in this country: a chauffeured vehicle and a sprawling home in
the city’s leafy heart.
But
when he arrived at the Secretariat on Thursday, Mr. Kejriwal found a group of
protesters from a teachers’ union who had spent the night on the pavement
outside his office, demanding a wage increase they said that they had been
promised, and chanting: “The common man is here! Where is Kejriwal?” and, “As
soon as you were elected, you became a V.I.P.!”
Across
town, one of Aam Aadmi’s newly elected legislators had called a news conference
to denounce Mr. Kejriwal as a “dictator” and a “liar” who had abandoned the
party’s principles. And Mr. Kejriwal’s law minister has taken part in a
televised, vigilante-style operation singling out a household of Africans he
said were running a sex and drug ring, infuriating African diplomats, the Delhi
police and the Foreign Ministry.
The
city has emerged from its postelection swoon, in short, and criticism is coming
from many directions. On Saturday, when Mr. Kejriwal gave his first interviews
since taking office, he was battered with combative questions, and responded
combatively, dismissing the criticism as rhetoric from the country’s two large
parties, the Indian National Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, which
suddenly view the newcomer as a threat.
“Our
government did much more than we expected to in 21 days,” he told an
interviewer on the NDTV news channel. “Now, B.J.P. and Congress may do whatever
they want, but they cannot say we are corrupt. Now they are saying that we are
anarchist and we do not know how to run the government.”
The
success of Aam Aadmi, founded only a year ago out of the embers of
anticorruption street protests, has been the surprise of the political season,
and it has injected a new, exciting element into the coming showdown between
the two timeworn heavyweights, Congress and the B.J.P.
Electrified
by the public’s reaction, Aam Aadmi’s leaders swiftly decided to put up
candidates for 400 parliamentary seats in the general election. New members are
pouring in as fast as the party can register them, and at week’s end, party
leaders said membership had reached 1.5 million. Would-be candidates for
Parliament camp outside the party’s headquarters and the gate to Mr. Kejriwal’s
apartment complex, clutching forms listing their qualifications for office.
Mr.
Kejriwal, a former tax commissioner who has never previously held elected
office, is scrambling to keep up with the promises he made to his supporters in
Delhi, only too aware that disappointing them could cause a euphoric moment to
collapse. But keeping promises, too, causes problems, he discovered this week,
when he followed through on his pledge to ban foreign investment in
supermarkets in the city, which helps mom-and-pop retailers but could hurt job
creation.
Many
in business and industry condemned the move, among them a prominent
entrepreneur who had recently thrown in his lot with Aam Aadmi, and who went on
television to warn the party’s leadership against “the politics of cheap
populism.” More rifts like this are bound to follow, said Shekhar Gupta, editor
of The Indian Express, a popular daily newspaper.
“Right
now, it seems to be unraveling, for the simple reason that they haven’t been a
political party for very long, so the structures and shock absorbers of a
political party aren’t there,” Mr. Gupta said. “There is no central ideology
that everyone agrees on. All kinds of people are joining in.”
Some
of Mr. Kejriwal’s difficulties are understandable enough, as he rapidly shifts
gears from leading street protests to governing a state of about 18 million
people. Last Saturday, he began what was to be a weekly “janta darbar,” or
public hearing, setting up a desk outside the Secretariat and soliciting
grievances from the general public.
But
thousands of people poured into the space, clambering over barricades trying to
reach Mr. Kejriwal, and the police, worried that he would be crushed, hustled
him back inside. He later appeared on the roof, urging the crowd to go home.
Four days later, he announced that he was scrapping the “janta darbar” idea,
and would instead be soliciting feedback online.
Other
missteps may prove harder to unwind, like Wednesday’s raid on a household of
African migrants. Several women from Uganda and Nigeria told reporters they
were stopped by a crowd that included Aam Aadmi’s law minister, Somnath Bharti,
on their way home from a party and forced to undergo urine tests against their
will.
In a
stormy, televised confrontation, police officials refused Mr. Bharti’s demand
that officers enter the house, saying they did not have a search warrant or
sufficient backup. The police later said the tests showed no evidence that the
women had used narcotics. But Mr. Kejriwal sided so staunchly with his minister
that he has demanded the officers involved be suspended, threatening to begin a
sit-in on Monday outside the office of the minister who oversees the city
police.
None
of these problems alarmed Amit Garg, 25, a law student who was stationed at the
party’s headquarters in central Delhi last week. The December elections were an
ecstatic time for Mr. Garg, who slept on the floor rather than waste time going
home, and now he was busy taking the names of people who were coming in to join
the party.
“Before
I worked for Arvind Kejriwal, I understood that nothing could be changed in
India, but now I think that things can be changed,” Mr. Garg said. Sitting in a
room illuminated by a single bare light bulb, he proudly ticked off Mr.
Kejriwal’s major acts since taking his oath of office as proof that “whatever
we committed, we fulfilled.”
“I
am here because people can no longer tolerate corruption, and it’s not easy to
change things in India,” he said. “He does not have a magic wand. He needs
time.”
