A group of 70-odd people —most of them men — from Delhi’s Karol Bagh sit and listen to with rapt attention in a small room, which is the office of India Against Corruption (IAC) in Kaushambi, Ghaziabad. The speaker is Arvind Kejriwal, the anti-corruption activist who is now turning a politician. His yet-to-be-named political party aims to do many things in the first year, which his supporters claim, will take two decades for others to do.
“Most people don’t know about their rights. We should tell them what their rights are. And we must work in our respective areas....” This is what Kejriwal tells the groups, says Mahavir, a property dealer from Delhi’s Rohini and an IAC supporter.
One session lasts for about an hour. And then the next batch of volunteers and prospective party workers enter the room for their turn of indoctrination in Kejriwal’s brand of politics.
By evening, five to six batches are done and Kejriwal leaves for a public meeting in Matiala, near Uttam Nagar in west Delhi, to take up the issue of inflated electricity bills.
Sanjay Kansal, a human resource trainer and a professional organiser, takes over from Kejrwal. This session is with people from Mundka in west Delhi. Kansal gives them a phone number of a contact person in the area. “If you plan an activity, send a message to the contact person in the area. And, your activity will be on our website.” Everyone keys in the number to their cell phones. But some are not satisfied. “What about Arvindji’s number?” Everyone wants to directly connect with the leader.
Kansal smiles and obliges but with caution. “He may not take your calls. You may send a message, if it is urgent. But if you do it too frequently, he may stop reading them, too. So the best way is to convey your messages to your contact person,” he tells them. As he winds up, Kansal asks them if they wanted to go to Farrukhabad for a day-long protest against Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid.
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Almost everyone wants to go. Those who want to go may give Rs 500 to the contact person, and then come to this place on the night before November 1. Buses would be waiting for them.
Some ask Kansal the plan of action in Farrukhabad. “That would be revealed on the way. Maybe we won’t come back. Maybe we will be beaten up,” Kansal says, laughing and the rest join him.
Kansal tells them offices would be opened in their areas . “Of course, you have to open the office,” he says. Then, as he rises to leave, he tells them: “Start wearing the ‘I am aam admi’ caps and also distribute them. You can buy them from the office here.”
Kansal shies away from talking about himself, except that he has been in the profession of building business organisations for the past 25 years. There are many like him who are in the task of building the party in different parts of the country — especially in Delhi, says Manish Sisodia who has been with Kejriwal since 2005 .
It is obvious that the emphasis now is Delhi, where the party would be tested for the first time. And there is a feeling among party members that if it does well in Delhi, it would do well anywhere in the country.
“Whether the party wins or loses, I am with them,” says Jarishankar, an elderly man from Nangoloi, who is attending the training sessions for volunteers.
Most people who are coming forward don’t want to become MLAs or MPs. “They just want to work for change. I think that is what is positive about it,” says Sisodia, who adds that the target right now is to reach every house in Delhi and the whole country, through volunteers.
At meetings, volunteers are told to open offices at the ward, Assembly and Lok Sabha constituency levels. There will be a contact person for each area, at each level. The party is being woven together slowly like a spider’s web. For example, says Sisodia, Indore-based management lecturer Prahlad Pandey is dedicated to building the party in Madhya Pradesh.
In Jamshedpur, it is an engineer who has come forward to lead. “That would build the party in Jharkhand. These people would be the foundation stones of the party,” says Sisodia.
Satish Sharma, a chartered accountant in Uttarakhand, has told his partners that he was taking a break to work for IAC’s political party. “He is now working full time for us,” says Sisodia. He is quick to point out that it is not their degrees, but the passion that is energising the party-building.
Another young man from Haldwani, who had won panchayat elections with a Congress ticket but left the post in disappointment, is now mobilising people for IAC in his area. He says change was possible with this effort. It is the story of Devendra Thakur, a petty contractor in Ghaziabad, who has left his work to his brother and plunged into party work for IAC. Thakur is now busy creating a district coordination committee, a working committee and a Lok Pal committee for the party in Ghaziabad.
“IAC leaders never come here for meetings, for they trust me to do the job. And I can never let them down,” says Thakur, touched by their faith in him. According to him, this structure is a miniature of what the party would be across country.