If Arvind Kejriwal wants to take on bureaucracy, who will be his preys

BUREAUCRAT-turned politician Arvind Kejriwal has been dropping bombshells every now and then. And the targets? The high and mighty like Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra, BJP president Nitin Gadkari and corporate honcho Mukesh Ambani. Till now, he has not targeted any bureaucrat, but if he chooses to do so, who will be Kejriwal’s victim? Here it is:
First, let’s put the facts and possibilities in perspectives. Kejriwal himself was an IRS-IT official before he left the service, and his wife is still a serving IRS-IT official. Will he then target bureaucracy? Those in corridors feel Kejriwal, the politician (he likes to call himself a political activist, not politician) won’t waste time targeting small fries among babus when he has succeeded grabbing prime time slots in news channels and half of the front page of national newspapers on a sustained basis. But if decides to take on babudom to make it a point, here are 3 possibilities.

1. If you have noticed, Kejriwal’s style so far is destructive innovation. What he has been trying to do is to disrupt the system by defying conventions or unwritten rules. And for that he has systematically identified weak points of some of the big fishes and challenged them when the sea is calm. If he follows the trend, he may target only a high profile bureaucrat preferably with strong political connections.

2. You must have noticed during live press conferences of Kejriwal that he is backed by documents, facts and figures culled out by his efficient backroom research team. Kejriwal simply interprets those documents to forcefully make his point and smash the target. In that case, his team must have filed hundreds of RTIs on their future bureaucrat targets.

3. Kejriwal’s expose are not original in nature. Whether it’s Robert Vadra’s DLF connection or Gadkari’s business interests, or even RIL-CAG stand-off, all came out in bits and pieces in newspapers and television channels. But Kejriwal put those together, added value through his own research and explained those point by point in the most simplified fashion. With that logic Kejriwal will not hunt a bureaucrat on his own, but may pick up one against whom some documents are already in public domain, and what’s needed are mere value additions.

Action and Appointments
a) Rakesh Misra, a 1974 batch officer belonging to Central Engineering Service (Civil), has assumed office of the Director General, Central Public Works Department (CPWD) under the ministry of urban development. An engineer from IIT Roorkee, he had served as engineer-in-chief, PWD, in Delhi government. He played a key role in executing target-based Commonwealth Games projects.