A recent addition to the cult of the Delhi chief minister is an advertisement with a simple (and simplistic) message: before Arvind Kejriwal, there were bhrashtachar-inflated power bills and life after the messiah has been much easier for the aam aurat. She is a housewife, our Everywoman, and, remarkably for Indian political messaging, she is seen in the advertisement to be mulling and making a political choice — without any prompting from her entirely sedentary husband. Yet, what it gives with one hand, it taketh away with the other.
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It is especially the reality in Delhi, where women work participation rates are one of the lowest among Indian cities. But that the Aam Aadmi Party government would choose to represent it, without being in the least troubled by this obvious inequality and injustice, that it chose not to imagine women and men otherwise — as sanitation workers or as teachers, as co-workers in the kitchen — deserves to be called out.
The man who looms over the ad is, of course, Kejriwal. He is the saviour come to redeem a corrupt city, even if he is thwarted by forces of evil. This is a government ad that reduces the elaborate process of governance to a superhero syndrome. To those who have watched the AAP’s broad coalition of ideas and activism shrink into a one-man show, this should come as no surprise.
