Arvind Kejriwal is a bureaucrat-turned-politician. He is the national convener of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the seventh Chief Minister of Delhi. Before entering politics, Kejriwal pursued a career as a civil servant after graduating from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur with a degree in mechanical engineering. He later joined the Indian Revenue Service (IRS).
Kejriwal founded the Aam Aadmi Party in 2012, after splitting from the India Against Corruption movement, which helped him rise to prominence as an activist riding the wave of widespread public anger over corruption charges on the then Congress-led UPA government.
The AAP first came to power in 2013 after forming a coalition government with outside support from the Congress, but that government soon lost confidence. In the fresh elections, AAP swept to power and Kejriwal joined office as CM with a majority in 2015. The party has since grown and increased its footprint in neighbouring states like Punjab.
“you can fool some people all the time, and all the people some time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time” ??? An idiotic response, indeed.
What about transgenders? No Free rides for them? Sexist Kejriwal murdabad.
The objective of making women’s rides free is to encourage them to take up more public space; more women means they’ll feel more secure. So it’s a good move. But each service has a cost and who’ll bear the cost in this case. The taxpayers! Why? Almost all the rides of the babies and kids are free today, that of the children and senior citizens are subsidized. So why can’t the women’s rides be subsidized? There is another argument against making it a freebie; anything available for free tend to be misutilized. What if a woman simply travels to spend time? If a woman’s travels are free and that of children are not free, should the woman stand in queue to buy ticket for the children? Doesn’t it look odd? It’s like, helmets are not made mandatory for SARDARs, so it looks odd to make helmet mandatory for their women who are pillion riders. In fact the mandatory rule for wearing of helmets for pillion riders was revoked in Delhi at least once only for this reason.
Anything that empowers women gets my vote. However, with the caveat that it should be fiscally sustainable. Delhi Metro is not financially profitable, despite so much support, starting with low cost funding from Japan. In Bombay, the BEST’s bus service loses money, subsidised by the supply of power. It will be difficult to extend public transport – environmentally an imperative – if its viability is further eroded by such clearly We have to win the next election at all costs populism. Even AAP’s decision to supply free water to households is not prudent. AK will have to learn from LKY if Delhi is to become Singapore.