The hallmark of tyrants is paranoia. Nazi concentration camp survivor and one of the founders of Intel corporation, Andy Grove, said famously that only the paranoid survive. In the eponymous book, he wrote, “Business success contains the seeds of its own destruction... Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.” Politics is no different. Paranoia is a trait of successful leaders whose persecution complex breeds the belief that their monsters are real. Grove would have seen in Arvind Kejriwal a man who exemplifies paranoia, whose politics contains the seeds of his destruction—his obsession with Narendra Modi.
The Delhi chief minister believes that Modi is out to murder him. He was convinced that Modi’s sole purpose in life is to make his life miserable, sack his government, get Delhi Police to disobey him, arrest his ministers, and file FIRs against them and his MLAs. He is a Modipath, who assumes that the Prime Minister feels the same about him, for want of nothing better to do. He sees Modi’s hand in everything—the Emergency, the floods, dengue and Donald Trump. In other words, Modi is his meal ticket, which keeps him in the news. For any mass politician without executive skills, headlines are more important than a sensible head on the shoulder.
The truth is that it is not Modi that Kejriwal is really afraid of. He is afraid of himself. He is scared of messing up, frightened of shadows lying in wait in his Modi nightmares to dispossess him, and fearful of conspiracies to unseat him, emasculate and erase him. He loves power with the desperation of a man who can’t believe his own luck, but avoids responsibility. This is what makes him the country’s only chief minister without a portfolio. It allows him to interfere in governance, concentrating all decision-making powers in himself. Kejriwal does not accept the fact that no leader is competent to run the state by himself. But his all-consuming need for respect and dominance is so deep that he will not delegate responsibility. He is a control freak. There is no space in AAP or his government for independent opinion, stature or speech. Sycophancy is the only hallmark of acceptability into his fold as the ousting of Yogendra-Prashant combo and others shows. Uncooperative ministers are ejected. Like Grove, Kejriwal suspects that complacency breeds failure. Hence he isn’t. But then, he doesn’t know what to do. Thus, he boxes with shadows. One in particular.
This neurosis is causing the slow decay of Delhi. All Sheila Dikshit did to make it a modern metropolis is being undone. Infrastructure is moribund. No new projects have taken off. Budgets are unspent. The man who accuses the Delhi Police of ignoring women’s safety is unable to prevent women in his own party from committing suicide because of sexual harassment. The one responsible for all this, in Kejriwal’s mind, is Modi.
Kejriwal was a unique symbol of man’s belief in himself when everything else fails. It is his cachet. It worked in Delhi and may work in Punjab. What makes a good leader is his belief in himself. What makes a great leader is his belief in the goodness of humanity. But all that Kejriwal fatally believes in is power over governance. Hence the paranoia. It is not Modi who is conspiring against him. It’s just Kejriwal versus Kejriwal.
Email Ravi Shankar at ravi@newindianexpress.com