Book Review: Swaraj by Arvind Kejriwal

Swaraj

- Arvind Kejriwal

Came across this book, while checking one of those million facebook updates from friends, mostly gunning for Arvind Kejriwal's blood. He is called more left than leftists, said to be trying failed socialism and some even say that he doesn't have a clue about what to do, and is just drifting aimlessly.

But, if one has patience to read this book (just 74 pages), one can easily say he is anything but the above said things. He had traveled length and breadth of the country, analyzed problems at grass-root level, compared the existing systems with several other successful systems aorund the world and proposed solutions.

The theme is Swaraj, self governance, a participatory democracy. He argues how the current system is not democracy at all. In the current system, a village can't decide what it needs, but, state and central governments decide a set of schemes sitting in the capitals, and uniformly apply them on thousands of villages. When thousands of such schemes fail to do the magic, there is not even a feedback loop. Same goes with the cities as well. A tax-payer has no direct say on how that money should be spent. All one does and can do is elect a representative and pray.

He doesn't propose a completely different alternative. What he proposes is a decentralized and participatory democracy, which can be achieved even without any constitutional amendment. He discusses the problems with corruption at different levels, accountability in governance, land acquisition by corporates, random mine allocation,  usage of water resources  etc., which are some of the burning and fundamental issues. He proposes Swaraj (self governance), which needs citizen participation at every level as the solution for all. He cites examples from USA, Brazil and Switzerland where it worked. Swiss constitution seems to have a provision where a proposal signed by 100,000 citizens automatically becomes a bill for discussion in parliament. Brazil seems to have tried having preliminary budget discussion on roads. And, they work.

His ideas are consistent with 'Grama Swaraj', attributed to Gandhi.

He doesn't talk high of right people getting into assemblies and parliament solving things. Probably, he had written this before the formation of AAP :-)

The book is available online for free and in pdf form in Hindi and English