It was in Sunder Nagri, a resettlement colony in North East Delhi, that Arvind Kejriwal gave shape to the two objectives of his political career—taking on corruption and serving the urban poor. About two decades ago, in these congested lanes that he called his karmabhoomi (land of duty), Kejriwal launched an NGO called Parivartan that used the Right to Information Act to expose corruption in the lower levels of government.
He operated out of a one-room office in Sunder Nagri; there was minimal furniture and a small team of youngsters drawn mostly from the area. One of them was Santosh Koli, a chirpy girl who was knifed by the ration mafia in 2005, and who died in a road accident in 2013. Once, Kejriwal, with Koli, had taken a bunch of South Asian journalists—there as part of a UNDP workshop— around Sunder Nagri and enthusiastically briefed them about the work they were doing. It was about exposing corruption and giving the residents of the area the amenities they were entitled to.
Kejriwal had quit the Indian Revenue Service to become a transparency activist and was awarded the Magsaysay award in 2006 for his social work. Soon, he would put together what was to be independent India’s biggest people’s movement—the India Against Corruption campaign—which not only changed the course of politics in the country, but also paved the way for Kejriwal to become part of the system he was railing against.
What is ironic is that, now, the 55-year-old Delhi chief minister, who started his public life as an anti-corruption crusader, finds himself in judicial custody in a graft case. The Enforcement Directorate arrested him on March 21 in connection with alleged corruption in the framing and implementation of Delhi’s excise policy.
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