Last Friday, the city witnessed unprecedented rainfall, though bringing much relief from the equally unprecedented heat in the month of April, it also brought with it the rain time jams on the city roads. As the citizens struggled their way through the water clogged roads, the political parties were out doing what they are best at – senseless raillery on the issue.
The opposition AAP was quick to point out that all the tall claims being made by the BJP government on managing monsoon traffic had come a cropper.
CM Rekha Gupta was quick with her reply saying, “This is not a one-day problem but an issue of backlog of development, system breakdowns and apathy of administration in Delhi in the past 10-15 years.”
So the Chief Minister agrees and so does a majority of the people who voted the AAP government out that Arvind Kejriwal’s team did not pay any attention to the city infrastructure in the past 10 years. The Chief Minister was, however, off the mark in claiming this period of non-development to 15 years.
Those who have lived in Delhi since the turn of the century would agree that for 15 years before Kejriwal’s government came to power in 2013, the city witnessed a development oriented administration under aegis of then CM Sheila Dikshit. In fact Dikshit’s last term in office between 2008 and 2013 saw development activity reach the crest before it touched trough under Kejriwal.
Paradoxically, this spurt in the development activity was made into a major poll issue with media running a campaign against the government. Dikshit’s third tenure witnessed the hosting of the 10th Commonwealth Games in the city.
Widespread development activities were taken up as what was called Games Legacy Projects. Given the multiple authorities working in the city, while the legacy projects were under the Delhi government, the other projects were under the Sports Ministry, Urban Development Ministry, Municipal Corporation of Delhi and the actual hosting of the games under the organising committee headed by Congress MP Suresh Kalmadi. There were issues with the functioning of the Kalmadi-led organising committee.This controversy, however, helped Opposition to target both the Manmohan Singh-led government at the Centre and Dikshit government in Delhi.
It snowballed into a major anti-corruption movement with social activist Anna Hazare undertaking fast, first at Jantar Mantar in April 2011 and soon after, having tasted blood, at Ramlila ground in August. From Hazare’s shadow was to emerge Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party.
They captured the imagination of people of Delhi for a corruption-free society and came to power in 2013. They remained in government till the end of 2024. This was, however, to turn into a nightmare for the citizens of national Capital with no attention to maintaining existing, forget developing new, infrastructure in the city.
On losing power, Dikshit had said in an interview that if the development work in the national Capital were to lose momentum, it would take several years to regain the speed. Today Rekha Gupta is faced with this situation, which was summed up in what she herself said, “An issue of backlog of development, system breakdowns and apathy of administration.”
Last week, ironically also saw a closure being filed regarding the investigations into an alleged case of money laundering by Kalmadi in the hosting of the Commonwealth Games. Several other cases related to the games have been closed earlier, in some sentence suspended and in other pending trial in the court. Incidentally there was no case against the
Dikshit herself or her government. However, the Diskhit government could not stand the trial in the people’s court and they were voted out. It’s another matter that the people have paid a big price facing, “backlog of development, system breakdowns and apathy of administration.”
Sidharth Mishra
Author and president, Centre for Reforms, Development & Justice
