During the days of the Iron Curtain, ordinary citizens of Eastern Europe were reputed to say 'They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work'. The Indian aam aadmi can say, 'They tell us they are not corrupt and we go on having to bribe them'. The fact that Indian politics is hopelessly corrupt is hardly worth discussing. The major players when accused of corruption usually respond by saying that the other party is corrupt too. Thus the Congress and BJP conduct their mudslinging matches. Voters know that anyone who has had the luck to enter the legislative arena at any level, from panchayat up to Parliament, is on to the yellow brick road. You only have to look at the declared (not even the true) assets acquired by MLAs and MPs and you know that the most profitable activity in India is politics.

In dictatorships, the top people restrict the fruits of corruption to the few they know. India, being a democracy, has democratised corruption. Once you are in, it is like living in the Forbidden City in Beijing. You are immune from legal consequences and you can go on being corrupt with impunity. The media is docile because they know the consequences of exposing the powerful can be crippling. If you are an uppity anchor, a large defamation action costing crores could be slapped on you.

It is this collusive culture which Arvind Kejriwal has begun to challenge. He will be denounced as being in the pay of one or the other party since the political classes cannot imagine anyone outside their circle to have the wherewithal to find the evidence against them. Hence the universal anger of the political classes against Kejriwal. He has obviously decided that from now till election time he has to release scandal after scandal exposing corruption. There is no danger that he will run out of material before May 2014.

This is a tactic hitherto unused in Indian politics. Normally everyone is too decorous or afraid to expose the powerful. But Kejriwal does not care. He has to build up a new party. This is something which has happened only occasionally in the last fifty years. This party can only thrive on numerous small donations from people who are fed up with the political culture. As Obama did in his 2008 campaign, Kejriwal will harness lots of small sums of money from millions to finance his party.

If he is smart, he will not get into any detailed policy statements. After all there is no chance his party will come to power. He would have done miraculously well if he gets even ten MPs elected in 2014. Kanshi Ram is the last outsider who built a successful party. He began way back in early 1970s and it took twenty years before he had a machine which won seats in UP.

The important point is that India is ripe for some new politics. The old politics has clearly run out of ideas and energy. Given the new media which the political oldies do not understand, there is much more openness than was possible. You don't need to own a newspaper or TV channel to expose a scandal. RTI and a blog will do or a suitable app on your 3G mobile. Information has been democratised. The Anna Hazare campaign may have been old and moribund on the platform but it was young and vibrant in the crowds it attracted. All that fasting was a waste of time, real old fashioned and outdated stuff. What matters is the guerrilla tactics with news and embarrassing the powerful. The young are excluded from normal politics (unless of course their families have bequeathed them seats). The young will do politics in their own way which is beyond the ken of the leaders and their chamchas.

It is the process which is important and not the final outcome. Kejriwal's task is to shake the politics up and not predict the outcome. As it is, the 2014 election will see all parties losing their normal strength. Some new blood would be welcome.

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