Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
by the government, which did not have a majority in the upper house and feared defeat on
key issues such as the prime minister being subject to investigation and the government
losing control over the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The session ended in uproar,
without passing the bill, and it was not till December 2013 that the Bill was passed at a
time when the government was desperate to show it was acting on corruption.
Hazare's campaign lost most of its momentum once the legislation was launched in par-
liament, but it led to an even more significant development when Arvind Kejriwal created
the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to contest parliamentary and state assembly elections. Kejri-
wal had been involved in civic and social campaigns for about 12 years, initially with a
voluntary organization called Parivartan that focused on local issues such as governance in
a poorer part of Delhi, and on the right to information.
Kejriwal's first test came with an election for the Delhi state assembly in December
2013 when his party won an astonishing 28 of the 70 seats, and he himself defeated Sheila
ated, winning just eight seats compared with 43 in the previous election in 2008 - a humi-
liating result that was far worse than had been expected. Although she had a comfortable
'aunty' public image, Dikshit's reputation had slipped because she had continuously tried
to evade responsibility for Delhi's significant problems. She had deflected onto others cri-
ticism about both the appalling and corrupt preparations for the Commonwealth Games in
2010, and continuing problems with water and electricity supplies and high prices. She was
also personally identified with the Gandhi family, so she epitomised much of what needed
to be changed.
The Aam Admi Party's victory is significant because it underlined the desire for a break
with the corruption and mismanagement of recent years. Kejriwal talked about a new sort
of politics, and the party's election symbol was appropriately a broom. Focusing on local
as well as state-level issues, the party produced individual manifestos for each of Delhi's
70 assembly constituencies as well as one for the state as a whole. Its success boosted its
activities in other states, and it aimed to win enough seats in the 2014 general election to
become a significant force in parliament.
RTI and CAG
The middle-class-driven surge of opinion against corruption was boosted by two factors
- a Right to Information Act (generally known as the RTI) that came into force in 2005,
and the appointment, in 2008, of Vinod Rai, a senior bureaucrat, as CAG. Rai turned this
into a campaigning and interventionist role and his reports on issues such as the Common-
wealth Games, coal mining and telecoms fuelled public anger and infuriated the govern-
