India Has Won

It is fair to say that I am disoriented. Last night I did not sleep until the break of dawn. Sitting here in God's Own Country I am beginning to soak in the how India has changed in the past few days. We are a funny species. We get enormously affected by things that don't really affect us. We get stuck into ideas that don't exist and concepts that are expressed by the continuing conversations between our kind, between the dead and the alive. Step aside, Vijay Maliya, the new king of good times has arrived.

The results are out for the largest election ever conducted by humankind. And India, it seems, has won. An India which only represents the majority Hindu population that has been systematically homogenized for political gains. In this India, everyone who does not accept they Hindu way of life (whatever that means) is deemed to be a second class citizen and by that logic has lost. India has won. After a century of subjugation by the British and a few centuries of bowing before Mughals, Indians (Hindus) have won back its own territory. The Hindu Rashtra is finally here, with the right wing Bharatiya Janata Party, winning a massive mandate to rule the country.

The term Hindu is more a geographic expression than a religion, but with every passing day, it is taking the shape of a chauvinist religion. This is accompanied with a growing intolerance for anything that goes against Hindu pride. History is re-written everyday. India's 180 million Muslims, none of whom will be representing the winning party, have one choice in front of them. Accept the Hindu way of life, or resign yourself to being second class citizens. This is shown by how the supreme leader of the BJP, Narendra Modi has put the Muslims in their place in his home state of Gujarat.

End of Liberalism

India's liberals have to take blame for this. With plum placements and a good lifestyle, they had become lazy and thoroughly corrupt. They became the ruling class of India and had a symbiotic relationship with the Gandhi dynasty. The Gandhi dynasty which started with Indira Gandhi taking control of power by declaring an emergency is finally coming to an end and liberalism is out. The elaborate power structure has been rotten and dismantled with remarkable ease by the right wing.

The question for the liberals, or whatever remains, is how to regroup? There was one ray of hope. The Aam Aadmi Party. This party came out of the frustration with the ruling class and promised a new beginning. In a refreshingly brave move, its leader, after he was elected Chief Minister, decided to let go of the elaborate security apparatus that had become a trophy of power. He even declined to accept a palatial bungalow that comes with the post. He then went on to cement his liberal leanings by making lifeline water free for citizens of Delhi.

Sometimes things that appear too good to be true, really are. The honeymoon quickly ended and the media turned vicious against the Aam Aadmi Party. The party was quickly filled up with opportunists and self promoting leaders. With no yardstick to measure and no culture formed, it was doomed into disaster. The people rejected this motley groups of individuals without any ideology or organization. Even in this devastated state, it represents the best hope for liberals

What about the Muslims?

The Muslims of India have a very serious question in front of them. The oil that fills up the tanks of gas guzzlers in America has fueled a very conservative version of Islam in India. Poor Muslim children are lined up in Madrassas or religious schools in the margins of Indian cities to learn Arabic. Discriminated and disowned in their land, the only economic structure for vast number of Indian Muslims is this Arabic utopia. Their problem is compounded by the history of partition when Muslims had demanded a separate homeland for themselves. India's founding fathers on the other hand believed in a more inclusive and modern vision of the nation state, where all religions would be treated equally, and pleaded the Muslims to stay back. But the trust between communities had broken and Muslims were viewed with suspicion and xenophobia.

Liberal Muslims on the other hand have been unable to provide any leadership. Unlike the blacks of America, Muslims of India have not yet had their Martin Luther King moment, let alone an Obama moment. Even though they have excelled in some domains, they largely remain marginalized and poor. The future for them is even bleaker.

The Lie

A lie, that had been intricately kept in place by fate and a number of opposing and balancing forces has finally been shattered. India, the land of the Buddha, has never been an enlightened society. The forces of darkness that had always lurked under the hood are now in the open. India is a society that is governed by power and pragmatism not freedom and ideals. The pragmatism is often mistaken for pacifism. What shape will this new phase take will be clear in the coming days. But for those who have lived in denial, getting used to this reality will be difficult.

Good days are here.

New Beginnings

Kavya was sticking close to me. We were sitting in a circle. The teacher and nine three year olds, eight mothers and me. The teacher was trying to get the younger ones involved in some rhymes. Voice was barely cracking out of my mouth and Kavya, sensing my discomfort, was quiet. She was watching the unfolding drama of bewildered toddlers and awkward adults trying make sense of it all. We were in Kavya's new school, Shishuvan and it was first day of the new school.

Only a couple of years back, to the collective horror of our parents and friends, we were thinking of home schooling Kavya. School, we realized did not really work for us. We spent years in numb classrooms, day dreaming and dreading the teachers index finder when it did the Russian roulette, hoping that it did not stop at us. Slowly and steadily we were institutionalised and domesticated. We learnt not to trust our instinct and in return were made to feel mildly competent to be slaves to a modern society. But our big hopes started evaporating when the commitment of raising a child 24x7 started staring in our face coupled with the complete resistance from our families. We would not send her to a regular school for sure. Alternative schools are not a rage in Mumbai and when we started looking, there were only two choices, Tridha or Shishuvan. It was easier to get into Tridha, but we did not want Kavya to spend her afternoons sleeping in a school bus so it left us with Shishuvan. The other schools, we decided were too commercial or too academic to be of any consideration.

And Shishuvan did not disappoint us. I liked the more traditional sounding name of the school and the classes and the uniforms with Indian prints, fusing the modern and the ancient. The school seemed to have a very strong and clear philosophy (with a bias for Powerpoint presentations). Even though I went to a catholic school, I have grown to have a post-colonial world-view. Fed by a range of recent writing on the Asian awakening and my family's Gandhian background (my grand parents wore khadi), I have learnt to ask uncomfortable questions about our complete cultural submission to the West. In that sense, Shishuvan did not seem to be a sell out.

But the English rhymes were still a bit hard to swallow. English was still the oppressors' tongue and a language of exclusion for the masses. Politics had entered early into Kavya life and I could only watch helplessly as she was getting prepared to get groomed into an elitist class, just like me. She might grow up thinking in English too, I sighed, slightly afraid of being a radical and yet unwilling to submit fully. Ending up, like many others, resigning to the fact that I had the ability to do neither.

Kavya was still taking time to settle down and was not fully buying into the rhymes either. Not that I minded it. A bit of scepticism for institutions was a healthy sign. The teachers were getting a bit worried though, so were other parents, who were sympathetic since I was clearly struggling to get her comfortable in class. Soon the other parents started dropping out. We spent one full class sitting against the wall, watching other kids do the rhymes. It was only when our chance came to paint, we participated with others. I could see Kavya big round eyes absorbing the new surroundings, only occasionally wanting to poke into the proceedings, fearful of what reactions that might have.

The worst was yet to come. The next day, Kavya would not come out on her own. So Rajitha decided to join us with her big tummy carrying another tiny baby. As soon as we reached the class, Kavya decided to give her best and most ferocious howl. She was not going in. Unfortunately on the day before, she had to be dragged into the classroom and today she was making sure that there was no way she would be dragged. So we had a deal. We would stand outside and only "check out" what was happening. Since I was the only parent, I decided I would not go in. So I picked her on my hip and we stood outside the class, watching through the glass door. The teacher was doing a neat trick. She conjured up a water melon from under a napkin and sliced it into small pieces for the kids. Thankfully, one small piece was sent outside for us. Kavya seemed to like that.

Then came the opening.

We will go in tomorrow, she told me. I could hardly believe my luck. I was preparing for another day of standing out, so I made her repeat it. And she said it alright, she would go in tomorrow. So we happily stood out for the rest of the hour watching other kids go through the motions. We were now prepared for what was to come. And we had done pre-school too and this seemed more of the same - rhymes and some fun. The next day, she did make some noises before going in, but they were very feeble. The day after, she was annoyed that the door was closed (since we were a bit late). 

Now she is fully settled in. It was a tough balancing act, but I think we did okay.

Thoughts on Parenthood

Kavya is already three. For first time parents, there is always a feeling that there was an era before parenthood and after parenthood. Before parenthood, life is much simpler. With a child around, the amount of activities suddenly explode. Also if you are someone who is not used to anticipating and planning, you can quickly get behind the task list, that just keeps on extending. Next thing you know is that you are on a treadmill - tasks at home, tasks at work. Then there is confusion on who is responsible if the task list does not get completed. This keeps on happening until you decide that certain things are just not worth the effort. Never mind if someone has to feel bad.

Action-Reaction

You are also learning on the job. You are learning what is means to step back from a "situation" and see what is really happening. It takes time to realize that you do not react if a child is crying. You do not react if your child is provoking you. You do not react if your partner is angry. You just step back and let things settle down a bit.

If you happening to be the questioning kind, specially if you have any affinity to the question "why", then your troubles are bound to multiply. Because almost everything we are conventionally taught about raising children is based on shaky ground and opinion. Books on parenting can have diametrically opposite opinions. You can try to raise your child as an achiever (producer) or a thinker. A lot depends on what you think and how you react to the situations.

With Kavya, since she is the only child in the house with five adults, she gets disproportionate attention. Judgement is passed on almost every act, and it is usually amusement or praise. So she has tended to be a producer. She has learnt to answer back nonsense because adults seem to love that. She also knows that everyone in the house has different levels of patience. So if she cannot get a response from one adult, she goes on to another. After the basics (input, output, rest) are satisfied, children want to learn and want attentions from adults. They think that the maximum learning happens from an adult, so they want all of them engaged. Adults are not always in the mood to respond, so children try different antics to get attention. A child does not realize that they are annoying someone by licking the floor. All they want is to test a hypothesis on how long can a particular adult tolerate me licking the floor. They also want a response from the adult. For them a groan or a retort is a victory. Once they find a pattern, they keep trying it again and again with some minor variations.

Schooling

Soon it will be time for her to go to school. In school she is going to realize that getting attention is going to be much harder. What she does to get that attention, or will she be okay not getting it will be interesting. The current system of schooling is a big failure, you realize thanks to John Holt. If they really taught concepts, then why pre-determined questions for exams? And how can you create inspiration that will make you learn? What really happens is that children are playing games all the time. Whatever "learning" (abstract or academic learning) happens is in spite of their schooling. Abstract thought often comes in solitude, when you model the system you are trying to understand in your brain. In school you only pick up patterns or skills. Mostly you learn how to stay out of trouble and kill your will. The incentives of schools are stacked up in such a way that exploring on your own will land you into trouble. Soon we will have to decide what is our role in this phase. How much should we submit to the schooling system so that we can stay out of trouble with our families and friends.

Children Again

Though it can be nerve wracking, the best thing about parenting is that it helps you decode your own childhood. Without being a parent I would have never realized why I respond to certain things in a certain way. Schooling did not work for me, but I realized this only after I became a parent. I was under the false assumption that I knew a lot more than I actually knew. I am sure there are many more things to learn, if I get the time to reflect.

Some people say parenting is rewarding and helps them unwind. I think parenting it is natural activity and there is nothing specially rewarding, and rather than unwinding, it draws you deeper into life. Maybe it could be because different people react differently to parenting. Perhaps because of they way they themselves were raised. 

What Aam Aadmi Party Can Learn From Open Source Software

Recently Chetan Bhagat asked on Twitter which company does Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) resemble. Many people replied Open Source Software companies like Android. One key comparison here is that the AAP like Open Source is mostly run by volunteers.

Personally, I find AAP to be the most exciting to happen to India in the past so many years and I want to be out there contributing in any way I can. I thought maybe I should help their web team locally. But did a few searches and did not find any contact info. From my past associations, I knew some senior functionaries in Mumbai and sent them a mail asking a few slightly hard questions, maybe my tone was a bit impatient too. What I got back was an unfriendly response from the functionary.

Now that got me thinking. I am a part of a smallish open source software from the beginning and have been in open source software for a few years now and I can understand where this bitterness comes from. They are having a volunteer and scaling problem. For AAP though, the Open Source Movement has already given a few answers.

1. Maintain public mailing lists

Almost all discussions, decisions of open source software happen on public mailing lists. Infact some of the discussions become stuff of legends. Sample this discussion between the legendary Tanenbaum and a young Linus Torvalds. Not only does having public discussions educate the rest about the thinking behind the actions, but also helps maintain a public record that is searchable by everyone. Plus, the burden of answering all questions does not fall on a few key people but a wider community. This one is really a no brainer.

Imagine if the entire public had access to the inner discussions between the core AAP team members like Arvind Kejriwal and Yogendra Yadav on whether to form a government or not, would not that be a huge win? Transparency to such a level would be game changing for politics.

If one list is very large, you can break-it up into sub-groups. One for each major region, one for communication, one for events, one for publicity, one for web, one for social media etc.

2. Make easy for people to contribute

All major open source projects maintain public repositories of their code which can be read and contributed to by technically anyone. And you can not only contribute in code, but also help by identifying bugs, helping in documentation, translation etc. The biggest game-changer for Open Source has been the rise of GitHub. Thanks to GitHub, the amount of contributions to Open Source projects, specially the newer ones has just exploded.

For politics, the equivalent of code is policy, there are issues, there is documentation and translation requirement too. So if AAP uses GitHub or any such platform, they can exponentially increase their problem solving capacity. Sample this problem: AAP needs to find out what is the most efficient way of distributing electricity in Delhi. They can open an issue / repository and their internal experts can post their views. They can also publish data from exiting utilities including technical, commercial etc. Now this problem encompasses technology, commerce, economics, supply-chain, management and implementation. So any experts from all of these areas can comment on the various aspects of implementing a new distribution policy. This way AAP can tap into virtually any number of resources. Sometimes it is surprising to see the number of people who are happy to help.

3. Create a eco-system for contributors

Once people have engaged in a project, their public "commit" record speaks for itself. Suddenly it is apparent to the entire community who are the people that have done exceptional contributions and whose insights matter. In Open Source, good projects are helped by donors and by people who use the software. Apart from donations, the public profile of these key contributors is elevated so that they can now earn a living as consultants, trainers and speakers. This creates a sustainable pool of contributors that is based on meritocracy and new contributors are encouraged to join.

In politics, debates do not end in policy creation only, they also have to be executed. The contributors should be given a chance to act as executives too. For example if in the electricity distribution debate, a few key individuals appear to be most knowledgable and competent, then their services will be automatically required to execute the policy too. All execution should be based on strict guidelines for transparency and accountability. The most important thing is that the party in charge of execution should be accountable to the people that could be a government or non-government body. Any party, private or government, that manages to win the contract for execution, they would be better off hiring the consultants who have publicly demonstrated high level of knowledge and skill.

4. Create public forums or let third parties maintain unbiased ones.

Open source encourages debate and this is best done on forums. Some of the best ones out there are obviously Stack Overflow, Hacker News and the erstwhile Slashdot. The quality of discussions on these forums is mind boggling. These are places where Open Source developers hang out to ask questions, share news or comment. This is also where culture is created. The best part of these forums is that there is a system that values good contributions v/s noise creation using a point system. Each of them have perfected the sauce based on their community. There are elaborate rules so that the forums are not gamed and moderators make sure that quality of each discussion is very high.

For AAP or politics, there is a big need for such forums. There are so many issues to be discussed and these do not all have to be discussed in the main forums. Having multiple forums will help in creating different cultures where the people will be discuss and form views. Such forums can be a good sounding board to gauge an idea before is brought into the purview of policy.

5. Let go of hierarchy. Let meritocracy take over.

Meritocracy is at the heart of the Open Source movement. If you do not like what is out there, you are free to make it better, in fact you are encouraged to make it better. Linus was not the President or Convenor of some high sounding group that made people use his software. People use Linux because its just better. The open source software domain is probably the most democratic one out there. There are numerous projects, contributors and sub-cultures out there and they are all thriving. The greatest example is probably Sal Khan. From nowhere, he became a major force in post-modern education because his videos where actually good.

For AAP, there is lots to be done. Everything from primary education and healthcare to the most esoteric financial regulation needs public attention and accountability. The only way they can quickly scale up quality is to embrace meritocracy. What is important is the mission not who executes it. If there is someone who is more capable, the system should allow that person to be identified and elevated quickly and not be buried in some senseless bureaucracy. For example, the Maharashtra leaders distributed two sample posters as the "official" posters of the party. Now who decides if they are good? What if someone can do a better job? Is there a system? Is there a way to put the mission before the personality? I think this is going to be culturally difficult to implement.

In conclusion, these are tall expectations, but the AAP has surprised us till now and I am hopeful they will continue to so!

(I am a reasonably skilled web developer and a member of AAP and would love to help the party to implement any of the above suggestions. If anyone in the party who matters is listening, give me a shout at my twitter handle @rushabh_mehta)

Aam Aadmi Party: How Far is Delhi?

These are just some reactions to whether Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) should form a government in Delhi or not.

By having a "yes/no" type of public vote, the AAP leaders may have bought some time, but in making the decision I don't think that should matter. According to me, what is at stake is this.

Currently the AAP is facing the curse of doing much better than it realistically anticipated. Never mind the bravado of internal opinion polls, but it seems that the AAP is not ready to run a government. They probably do not have the expertise or manpower or even the inclination (so far) to run a government. By pushing them to form a government, the mainstream parties have done the right thing. In Mumbai the slang when someone is burdened with un-realistic expectation is "bachhe ki jaan lega kya" (will you take the life of a kid?) So the mainstream parties think that the best way to fix AAP is by forcing it to form a government and then failing.

Now the AAP also has national ambitions and the national polls are only a few months away. To scale to a national level will require their top brains to fully dedicate to this task. This means that if it forms a government in Delhi, then it has to curtail its national ambitions. Otherwise it will fail miserably at the polls and the sheen of success will quickly fade.

So what should the AAP do?

In my view, the option is clear. Curtail national ambitions and try and run a government for as much time as possible. Why?

1. By not forming a government, it will lose faith of Delhi voters. They voted for governance and they deserve one.
2. The party is yet to establish it at the national level, so even if the momentum is big, it will take a lot of time to separate the signal from noise and this will not happen overnight.
3. By forming a government, they will learn the inner workings of running the government machinery. It is one thing to criticize, but it is another thing to motivate, fill the gaps, educate the government workers so that they start delivering.
4. By doing a decent job in Delhi, people across India will have a lot more faith in the AAP
5. Fixing urban utilities (water, electricity), public schooling and healthcare are "big" problems and all the top AAP leaders should get their hands dirty and show direction on how they are going to address them.

I think its a no brainer that AAP should form a government, even for 6 months or a year and show the mainstream parties that they are not kids. Arvind Kejriwal must become chief minister. He clearly went for the top job, standing himself against Sheila Dixit.

National ambitions can wait, minor resources could be applied to form deep relations with other regional leaders and also the verify if they are truly in for the "new" politics of AAP.

The worst outcome will be to form a government in Delhi and go for national ambition at the same time. This way they will do a half-assed job in both and lose the moment.

Best wishes to AAP in what they decide.

(I am a member of AAP)

Crossing the Thirties

The days are beginning to look all the same and past has started to blur. Things that you could recall in an instant and seemed very important are now suddenly distant. Are you finally growing up?

Sportspersons peak in their thirties. This time is supposed to have the best balance of one’s physical and mental abilities. The thirties are the middle part of an average human life-span. A time when you have enough to look back on and enough to look forward to. If you are in a roller coaster, this is moment where you are mid-way, between two slopes. 

But strangely there seems no time in your life when you are so disoriented.

You have probably been to the temperate west, where the grass is green and the sky is blue and you could smell flowers on a bright spring afternoon. In the temperate climates, the mid-day is the best time of the day. The temperature is nice and you could be sipping iced tea sitting in a cafe reading a book. But in the tropics, mid-day is when the heat is torrid. People don’t usually venture outdoors and they wear masks if they have to. If you are in a humid zone like Mumbai, you desperately need some ice cream or air-condition.

Life in India is also like the climate. When you are in the mid-day of your life, the sun is beating down and the responsibilities have all been piled up. You are probably married, and maybe have kids or they are on the way. Everyone has expectations and you stop living for yourself. You are also probably struggling in your work or feeling stuck somewhere. You are working hard for rewards that seem far away. The older ones at the top are the ones having fun and the younger ones are zooming by. And parenting is like no other job you have ever done. 

You probably can’t catch up with everything thats happening and meet everyone’s expectations. Forget your own. Something has to give. First its your friends, then its your hobbies, the things you loved doing, then its your parents, then its something else. But you don’t drop them altogether, you keep juggling.

When you are growing up, you have dreams for yourself. If you are a boy, you probably want to be Sachin Tendulkar or Bill Gates or both. You play hard, you have fun with your friends and scoot past your education. You day-dream of your success and plot your way to the top. You walk through the twenties deluding yourself, thinking its just a matter of time. At some point you realize that you are not going to make it. You suck at sports and you probably won’t make 0.1% of what Bill Gates earns, never mind your clever hacks. Reality gets into you and, suddenly, you are not what you were.

There is no template for the middle ages. The film stars go directly from age twenty-one to fifty-five. You grow up watching movies that idealize teenage love or make you believe that life is all good versus evil. Or you grow up reading books about detectives or spies or romance or magic. You follow sporting icons and bask in their reflected glory. The only time middle aged people are shown in movies is when they are strict parents to young protagonists and are always running away from their responsibility. So you are left with no role models. You are too old to be young and too young to be old. Life is not romance and illusions are, well illusions.

In this age you have probably made peace with the concept of dying. You realize that time has flown by and is flying with a greater velocity than ever before. Your pile of memories like the number of photos you have clicked on your phone, making you sluggish as you have to dig through a lot more files in your brain to pull out something interesting. You realize that things are not permanent, and the world was okay before you came and will probably just do as fine after you go. You realize that your name is not yours, it was selected by your parents, nor is your language, which your ancestors or rulers spoke for ages. Neither are your thoughts your own. They are a cocktail of your experiences and understanding and those YouTube videos. You realize that all they told you for so many years was probably just a sales commercial. You will fall one day and you better start preparing for it.

But your realize it was not always like that. Your youth was much nicer like a fresh cool morning with sun rays filtering in your room. You were carefree, yet you cared. You followed what interested you though you were conflicted with what society wanted from you. Grades was a silly game they made you play so that you could stay occupied. You promise yourself you won’t waste the evening the same way you wasted the morning, staying indoors when you should have been out in the sun.

In between all of this, you suddenly feel grateful. Grateful that it all happened. For a moment you forget your present maladies, you forget you faltered, you forget you were wronged, you forget the sins you have done to others. You realize that you are incredibly lucky to have experienced all of this. This is probably the only time you will see life as a whole. From the end to end. Its like that you are on top of a mountain that you climbed from one side and will get off from another side. The fog clears for a moment and a spectacular view appears. As you move forward on your journey, the beginnings will start blurring even more. So the sight you behold is probably a rare glimpse of the universe. You smile and you say thank you.

Open Letter to Arvind Kejriwal - Don't make this an AAM party

Dear Arvind Kejiwal,

Couple of weeks back, I attended the AAP meeting in my area. We met at the local park on a Sunday evening, and I had come with my wife and a friend and my two year old, who was busy picking leaves, as she is not allowed to pick flowers. Mishra was introducing us to the party and the activities they were doing in Mumbai. He was telling us about how they were able to show black flags when a regional politician came to speak in the area. Proudly he showed me images of his colleagues being dragged by the police. "I warn tell you people, when you join the party, you must be prepared for all consequences", he said ominously.

Tikku, an active party member, had brought a friend, who had a matter to solve. The friend had already approached other parties with the matter, and they had refused to take it forward. He had already paid the regional party some money, to forward the matter in the local police station.

"If you solve matters like these, how then are you different from the other party?", I asked Mohan, a serious looking young MBA student who was taking minutes on the laptop. "We don't take money to solve matters", he replied, "Our objective is only to help people". He then went on to explain how some people came to him few days back when their slum toilet was not working. "Just go to any government office with the Anna Cap and see the effect. They don't dare ignore us. This is the power of our party."

When you came to politics, I am sure you touched a raw nerve in a lot of people like me. An entire class of people was cornering our countries resources and abusing them for their and their communities' narrow gains. As Francis Fukuyama succinctly put it, "Indian politics is a system where favours are exchanged for political power". And I truly believed you were out to change this truism. I believed that your politics was about changing the entire order to a more ideology and merit driven process. Maybe I was hoping for too much.

I don't envy your position either. With the press behind you when you started your activism, I am sure you would have become a magnet for opportunists who were experts in playing the favours and "fixing" game. Your inner team also probably believes that this is the way politics is to be run. Lowering of electricity bills is still a "favour" you are doing in exchange of votes. In another meeting I attended at the city level, members were planning a clothes collection drive for drought victims in Maharashtra. Clothes for drought victims? Do they really need our old clothes, happy gotten rid by us?

As a citizen I root for you. I want you to change the entire system. Our country is facing a wave of cynicism. In broad daylight, our commons are being looted for personal and parochial gains. Large parts of the political establishment are fully compromised. You have repeatedly said all of this yourself. In this scenario, I will vote for anyone you put up as candidate and I don't really care what your policies are. I am not a big fan of Lokpal and nor am I a socialist and I would rather use less electricity than stop paying my bill. But I am someone who wants a change and you are my best hope. My only worry is that you are being eaten up by opportunists and short term issues.

My humble request to you is this. Please think-up of a good strategy for the upcoming national elections. For that you must have a list of 540 good candidates for the election and present a real alternative. I have read your nomination process, and while its great on paper, the party lacks a grassroots base to make is possible. Maybe a top-down approach might be the way to go. Good people have tried in failed in Indian politics, either as small parties or as independents. Why not group all of them and present a credible alternative to the people? Big challenges require big risks.

Every morning, I take my daughter to the neighbourhood park. There is an old lady who often comes with her grandson. One day, while my daughter was on the swing, I saw the lady walk around the park and pick up the garbage to put it in the bin. That moment was really inspiring for me because it gave me hope. It told me that in spite of the cynicism, there are people who are willing to care for what is not only theirs, but also ours. She felt ownership and it made me feel ownership.

You have given hope to a lot of people and I really wish you success, not for your sake but mine. My objective of writing this letter is that I wish you re-think your strategy. Small favours will probably not take you places. The press loves you so far, but the honeymoon already seems to be ending. If you start at the bottom, you will have no control over who joins you and what they would end up doing in your name.

An alterative strategy might be to have a strong ideological team at the top and a list of 540 electable candidates that are honest and capable. That might just be the recipe to shake up Indian politics.

yours sincerely,
Rushabh Mehta

(names of people changed)