AAM AADMI PARTY
* यदि अरविन्द केजरीवाल की पार्टी सत्ता में आ भी जाती है तो वर्तमान राजनीतिक व्यवस्था की अपेक्षा क्या अधिक बुरा होगा ?
* यदि ग्राम सभा को मामलों में नीति बनाने का अधिकार देना गलत है तो यह कहाँ तक उचित है की संसद वैसी ही नीति बनाए ?
* हमारे राजनेता संसद को कब्जे में रखकर इसी प्रकार मनमानी करते रहें और जनता को कोई वकल्प नहीं दिखा तो जनता अगर लीबिया जैसे हर समस्या का समाधान राजनेताओं को सूली पर चढ़ाना मान ले तो जनता का क्या दोष ?
* भारत में अभी वैसी स्थिति नहीं है क्योंकि भारत में लोकतंत्र है जहां राजनेताओं को वोट की सूली पर चढाने का अधिकार जनता को प्राप्त है । ऐसे में यदि कोई दल यह विकल्प जनता के सामने रखे तो इतनी तिलमिलाहट क्यों ?
* पक्ष-विपक्ष के नाम पर बने एक राजनीतिक गिरोह को तोड़ने का काम अन्ना हजारे करें, रामदेव करें, अरविन्द केजरीवाल करें, आम आदमी पार्टी करे या मीडिया -उसकी समीक्षा होनी चाहिए या आलोचना ?
Nonresident Indians Play Major Role in Aam Aadmi Party’s Delhi Campaign
During the month of November, Mohan Thirumalai, an information systems manager at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, would pick up his phone at his home in Alabama around 10 p.m. and dial a random number in Delhi, the first of around 60 calls he would make each night.
When someone answered the phone, Mr. Thirumalai, 35, asked the same question every time: “Kya aap jharu ki upar button dabadenge? (Will you vote for the broom?)”
The broom is the official symbol of the Aam Aadmi, or Common Man, Party, meant to signify the new party’s intent to clear out the corruption that plagues India. Its message has compelled Mr. Thirumalai, a native of Chennai, and dozens of Indian citizens living in the United States and elsewhere around the world to reach out to voters on behalf of Aam Aadmi before Delhi state elections are held on Wednesday.
Many of these overseas Indians, also known as nonresident Indians, are participating in a political campaign for the first time in their homeland, attracted by Aam Aadmi’s drive to clean up Indian politics. In 2011, the anticorruption activist Anna Hazare’s hunger strike to demand transparency in India’s government prompted a series of youth protests in Indian urban centers. While Mr. Hazare chose not to run for office, his top aide, Arvind Kejriwal, founded the Aam Aadmi Party in 2012 with the hopes of putting Mr. Hazare’s ideals into action.
“I have never supported any other political party in India,” said Somu Kumar, 32, a native of Madurai, Tamil Nadu, who works as an information technology project manager at Freddie Mac in Virginia and is using his expertise to lead the party’s overseas IT and social media team. “I observed elections, but never felt I should be a part of it until this party came along. They had a strong, enticing message that got myself and a lot of my friends involved.”
Although the Aam Aadmi Party is the clear underdog in the Delhi elections, Mr. Kejriwal and the party’s other candidates have rattled the political establishment, potentially playing the spoiler in some of the races in Delhi.
Ankit Lal, the head of the information technology at Aam Aadmi, who is based in Delhi, said the party would be nowhere without the support of nonresident Indians, also known as N.R.I.’s.
“N.R.I. support has been very, very crucial,” he said. “Such a successful planning and implementation for the campaign would not have been possible without N.R.I.’s. They have a different level of expertise.”
India’s main national parties, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress Party, also have support from Indians living overseas. The B.J.P. has social media teams operating outside of India, and many nonresident Indians are planning to come home to campaign for the party’s prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, according to local media. Efforts by Indians in the United States on behalf of Congress politicians include meeting with American congressional
For Aam Aadmi, technology has played a key role in its overseas efforts. Mr. Kejriwal conducted a Google Hangout video session with Indians living in Singapore to promote the party’s Adopt a Constituency, in which nonresident Indians could pick an area in Delhi and help the local campaign team reach a fund-raising goal of 1.4 million rupees, or $22,500. Mr. Kejriwal also held Google Hangout question-and-answer sessions with Indians in the United States, Britain, Australia, Belgium and Germany.
In Britain, Rajesh Redij-Gill, a 47-year-old Aam Aadmi supporter originally from Mumbai, took a sabbatical from his job at a digital marketing media agency to fly to Delhi to convince the party members in India that harnessing overseas support would be crucial to their success.
“We have tried to outsource, crowdsource volunteers outside of Delhi and abroad,” Mr. Gill said. “If you have volunteers in Delhi, I would rather have them knocking on doors.” The bulk of the technology work, he said, should fall on overseas Indians like himself.
Twitter and Google Hangout were used for fund-raising and get-out-the-vote efforts, but Facebook was the party’s primary organizational tool. As Aam Aadmi members visited households in Delhi, they used smartphones to photograph the phone numbers and emails they acquired from Delhi residents who were undecided or voting for another party. Then these campaign volunteers posted the phone numbers onto the Facebook group.
From there, volunteers at phone banks in the United States and elsewhere aggregated these phone numbers into a large electronic database, focusing on the phone numbers of undecided voters. This database was then distributed through the party’s website, giving each overseas caller a list of names and phone numbers of people in Delhi.
The Delhi residents, who included rickshaw drivers, business owners and housewives, were often shocked when they found who was calling.
“There is certainly excitement, astonishment, that someone is calling from the U.S.,” said Mr. Kumar. “They have heard before about N.R.I. support, but are still very surprised.”
Sreekanth Kocharlakota, 37, an administrator for Aam Aadmi’s overseas phone campaign who is based in Los Angeles, estimated that Indians living in the United States and 500 student activists at Boston University, the University of California, Berkeley and 40 other universities have made a total of 7,000 phone calls to Delhi voters for the party.
Not satisfied with just making phone calls, many Indians have returned to their home country to further support the Aam Aadmi’s efforts. Subhamoy Das, 26, a native of Rourkela, Odisha, and a biomedical engineering doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Austin for the past three years, suspended his studies for three months to campaign for the party in Delhi.
“I’m not hopeful A.A.P. will win Lok Sabha this coming year,” said Mr. Das, referring to the Aam Aadmi Party. “But even if they win Delhi and show that the principles they work on, such as swaraj [self rule] and all these things, if it works, then the people of Delhi will see change. That will be amazing.”
The coordinator of the party’s global support group, Shalini Gupta, estimated that 150 to 200 Indians from the United States, Germany, Belgium and Britain flew to Delhi to help with the campaign. Some of these supporters came for a few weeks, others a few months, helping to conduct door-to-door campaigns and consulting with party members at the headquarters in Connaught Place.
Ms. Gupta, 55, who works in Chicago as the director of the Intelligence Integrated Services Network for BP, has spent a total of five months in India this year for Aam Aadmi. After Ms. Gupta was involved in organizing the 2011 anticorruption protests, Mr. Kejriwal contacted her to request that she take over the overseas campaign coordination for the current election cycle.
She also spent the past four months developing the Adopt a Constituency program. Ms. Gupta said around 30 Indians living in the United States, Britain, Australia, Singapore and Germany participated in this project.
Ms. Gupta, who is now in Delhi for the final days before the elections, said the nonresident Indian volunteers are the “cream of the crop,” as they are often well-educated and hardworking individuals who care deeply about their home country.
Indeed, some of the nonresident Indian supporters were considering moving back to India to continue the party’s cause. “Being outside of your country you feel so helpless,” Mr. Das said. “You cannot do anything besides putting in your time and energy into things like this.”
For Mr. Das, the Aam Aadmi Party represents a chance for India to unite under the banner of progressive, clean politics.
“Since childhood, corruption has been a part of our life. You have to start living with it because if you don’t it will be hard to live,” Mr. Das said. “This party is the only hope that I can see that can bring a welcome change. It might take a long time. Delhi is a very good place to start.”
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