Dear Mr. Kejriwal,
I am great admirer of what AAP has
done so far and what it is trying to do and as the head of the AAP, I
offer you my heartiest congratulations. The challenge of cleaning the
politics and public administration processes is daunting one and I feel
that your decision to join politics to try to clean up the system
from within was the right one. But it is also important to remember
that while you give hope to the entire nation, your every step will
be scrutinized and you will be required to meet the high standards
that you have set for yourselves. Any mistake, or falling
short on any of the promises you have made, will give an opportunity
to both the cynics, as well as your opponents to downplay you. The
trust you have gained can be lost easily.
Therefore as a concerned optimistic
citizen, and as an economist I have certain suggestions for you. Very bluntly put, I feel that the
claims you have made of providing electricity and water are a
'little' extravagant (I will explain the use of the word 'little'
later in my letter). This concern has been voiced by many other
experts as well. India is a country poor in resources simply because
of a very large population, and therefore success of an economic
policy should not be judged merely on the basis of what it delivers
today but also on what it saves for future generations.
Let us take the example of water.
Improving water supply to poor people living in slums of India is
very important and I am confident that you will be able to achieve
it. But I also think that providing 700 litres of water free of cost
is a little too much. If we consider a household of 4 persons with
each person using about 4 buckets (about 100 litres) of water per
days, it makes it 400 litres per household. Thus one should start
charging a modest amount after that and anything above say 800 or
1000 litres of consumption per day should be charged very high rates.
Regarding electricity bills, I think it
will be very difficult to reduce the rates to half by the processes
of auditing the companies, bringing transparency and others which you
have mentioned in your manifesto. But it can be done for people using
small amounts, with higher rates being charged to those who consume a
lot. Thus there can be a cross subsidization of electricity. Reducing
the electricity rates uniformly by half, as your manifesto suggests,
makes no economic sense. So there has to be gradual increase in
electricity rates with only the poor seeing a reduction of
electricity prices by half while the middle and upper middle class
seeing only a small reduction if at all. I like the part where your
manifesto talks of improving the processes and making them more
transparent. But people don't care about processes. They care about
outcomes. One of your biggest challenge will be to convince the
middle and upper middle class, which forms a big voter base for you
and is hoping for a 50% reduction in their electricity bills, to
accept only a marginal reduction in prices. It will also give your
political opponents an opportunity to come at you.
More that anything else, I am looking
forward to see how you improve the public services such as eduction,
health and transport systems. There are many people and
organizations, such as Pratham, who have done very good work in these
field. You should try to hire people from these organizations to work
for you. They will help you come up with out of the box practical
solutions to the problems.
One of your agendas is to punish the
corrupt politicians and bureaucrats. While they should be punished,
please do not put it in your top few priorities. People do not care
if a certain politician went to jail or not, but they care much more
about their day to day problems. Governance and not punishing the
corrupt should be your first priority.
I have another suggestion regarding the
upcoming Lok Sabha elections. There could be many people who would
vote for you but playing the kind of role at national level that you
did in Delhi seems unlikely. You also have lesser time to raise funds
and strengthen you base in other areas. So my suggestion would be
that you should focus your energy mostly on governing Delhi right now
and not fight on too many seats (at best 15-20 in and around Delhi).
While you may win more seats if you contest election in more
constituencies, there is danger that your efforts to provide better
governance in Delhi could get diluted. You should fight elections only on
as many seats as you can without compromising on your efforts to
govern Delhi.
I wish you the very best for your
future noble endeavours.
