I had come to know recently that Arvind Kejriwal recently won an online poll on the official website of Time magazine as the man who most positively influenced the world the last year. Needless to say, I was stunned by the verdict because while I know Kejriwal is awesome, I had no idea that his 49 days of government had such a great impact on the world at large. (Modi came second). Of course the possibility of manipulation of an online poll, as scientifically well-set up as the one of Time, by fanboys of both Kejriwal and Modi, never occurred to me. And definitely any kind of dishonest manipulation by the supporters of a party that is all about revolutionary honesty seemed to be most impossible.
Anyways, today I came to know, that Kejriwal has won the Time Person of the Year, apparently the second Indian after Mahatma Gandhi to win it. (Original screenshot on the page of a local chapter of AAP, subsequently removed but at time of writing, is given above. This post to the FB page of a local chapter of AAP still has the post at the time of writing. Have taken a screenshot) This was of course beyond awesome, since he would be the only man in history to have won the Person of the Year, only 4 months into the year. Which means Time’s editors have realized that his performance in 49 days of government was so awe-inspiring that nothing anyone might do in the next 8 months could ever match up to him. After all, who understand time better than Time. As a matter of fact, I believe the exact words used by the editor of Time while evaluating Kejriwal’s portfolio was “Kraantikaari, Bahoot hi Kraantikaari”.
The more I thought about it, the more logical it seemed.
After all in 2013, it was the Pope who won the Time Person of the year.
And Arvind Kejriwal is very similar to the Pope.
How? Let me explain.
1. They wear white caps.
2. They rule(have ruled) over a dominion whose influence far exceeds its size.
3. They have embraced poverty.
4. Not only are they both poor, but they live in small bungalows that they did not ask for but are provided to them by their office.
4. They claim to be protected by God but still have a backup plan.
5. They have very loyal supporters who will tear into anyone that doubt their divinities.
6. They ask you to believe their words without providing any evidence
So if one wins it in 2013, the other surely should in 2014.
Congratulations sir. And no this post was not sponsored by Ambani, Adani or Advani.
The Greatbong Blog & Podcast 
First again…another iPad…Yippeee !!!!
Two thoughts:
1. If this is basis performance in the last year (2013), Kejriwal did an amazing (near fairy-tale) job of mobiliising middle class angst to overthrow a 15-year old corrupt government in Delhi. I was among the millions who believed that he was not leading just another political party but bringing about genuine change. Sigh.
Of course, people have not voted in this poll keeping only that in mind and for many Indians, his aura has only increased while I am in a minority that got disillusioned with him.
2. There are so many of us Indians that we can legitimately swing any online poll anywhere in the world. I don’t think Kejriwal or Modi supporters had to manipulate the poll. Just showing up in large numbers would have been enough.
Related Trivia: In the famous BBC poll where Amitabh Bachchan was voted Actor of the Millennium, Homer Simpson came 5th and Govinda came 10th. Kejriwal and Modi’s biggest triumph is that they beat Justin Bieber. Wow.
If Obama could be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize just for “not being Bush”; then Kejriwal, well and truly, deserves this award for “not being Rahul Gandhi,Narendra Modi,Mulayam Singh,Laloo Prasad ,Mayawati and Mamta Banerjee” – all at the same time.
Modi and Kejriwal, both represent change in indian politics. We need Modi as PM and Kejriwal as opposition leader. Time has compulsions to ignore Modi.
They also have ‘Devil’ as their most famous Opponent !
Apparently Modi was leading in the poll till the last . Then Time did delete many entries from the same IP which lead to Kejriwal topping the list. Interestingly the poll has also put Modi as the most disliked person globally 🙂
Regarding the first comment …. are you distributing iPads for first commentors or what?
You need some burnol. If Modi had won this poll, you would have come up with an article praising him and the Time magazine. btw, I think Modi should have been awarded this award in 2002 for his role in Gujarat riots.
Well said. Greatbong’s articles on politics have taken a rightward turn since quite sometime now. They are quite partisan now, not neutral any more. Most vicious jokes on Congress, Kejriwal. While Modi is also subjected to a few jokes, they are mostly of benign kind.
Although it is his blog, so I guess he is entitled to his opinion. Anyway.
after your fourth point , God given security but backup plan, one sees the Vatican ‘army’ followed by a NDTV banner. Then i scrolled down.
This is rather interesting coming from you GB. Being as computer savvy as you are, I am surprised that you never noticed the state of the art right wing PR machine at work online. These innumerable zero page ranked sources creating deliberately mischievous content.
AFA Time survey is concerned, the minion’s didn’t got to it in time, I guess they were busy spinning out Photoshoped content for FB.
Your last post about AK were spot on. The concern raised in them were too. AK is neither God nor the savior reincarnated. This revolution, is as broken and hacked up as we are, that’s the best we could juggad up at the moment. But he is the only hope of improving the rules of this game. He might not have achieved much, but the fact we are talking about Vadra, Adani and the one-who-should-not-be-named Ambani, is because of him.
Congress is Dead, or should rightly die a slow painful death in irrelevance. That leaves a huge vacuum for anyone who doesn’t believe in divinity of our lord Shri Modi.
Modi has turned Indian election into a presidential campaign, with a strong army of bhakts. It was only a matter of time, the ‘others’ (sickular/fagots/notHindoos) would gravitate to the best possible persona.
AAP is young, scrapy, stupidly idealistic, more ambitious than their aukat. I’m glad they are here.
well said himanshu 🙂 Thank god BJP is not claiming that times magazine is funded by AAP…
AAP is idealistic? From when? Shazia pandering to muslim votebank, Kejri dipping in Ganga before whole battery of media person, YoYa claiming his nickname to be Salim – which part of this is idealistic. They are as crooked as all other parties in the fray. I don’t understand how well educated people still can be fooled so easily.
Mr Khemka has been transferred more than 40 times, has been charge-sheeted by Haryana govt, just because he had the courage to do his duty and our beloved Kejri and his wife had/has never been transferred out of Delhi. I don’t believe that Congress govt is so benevolent, that they will not try to harass Kejri if hewas making their life so miserable. Now, most of us being code writers, why all these did not happen can be deduced pretty easily applying very minimal logic, ain’t it?
AAP isn’t perfect and I don’t always agree with them but it’s still a better option than BJP. Being a Delhiite, I can say that things were a lot better when AAP was in power. The gigantic sarkaari machinery actually worked and everyone did their job out of fear that any moment Kejri could kick them out. Now, some might argue that fear is not a great motivator and it’s not the way to get things done but seriously, man, go wait an hour at a govt office trying to clear your file and then talk about it.
So you believe that AK and wife were actually corrupt and in-spite of Congress’ best efforts they couldn’t dig anything up against them till date? AAP is not after BJP’s traditional vote bank, they are going to eat into the traditional liberal vote bank of congress. If you believe in B team conspiracies then I would frankly consider that naive.
Khemka gets transferred like crazy because he is sticking up the corrupts from within the system. More power to him, but that doesn’t negate the effort AK has put over the years.
Regarding tokenism and minority appeasement and in general, AAP has at best failed. GB pointed that out starkly in his earlier posts. That’s the toughest choice AK and AAP has to make in near future. This congress brand of secularism has done this country enough damage already. Hopefully AK and AAP could move away from them.
But assuming they are yet-another-sickular-party. Look at the candidates they are able to attract now and have given ticket too. Look at the agenda’s they are fighting these elections on. They are not hiding away from questions, their interviews don’t have to be prepped up.
I don’t really think we would see a AAP government in center in this decade, at best we have a chance at putting someone in parliament who ask difficult questions. If that can scare your Ambani’s and Vadra’s to loot us a just a little less, that in itself a good start.
So you believe that AK and wife were actually corrupt and in-spite of Congress’ best efforts they couldn’t dig anything up against them till date? AAP is not after BJP’s traditional vote bank, they are going to eat into the traditional liberal vote bank of congress. If you believe in B team conspiracies then I would frankly consider that naive.
Khemka gets transferred like crazy because he is sticking up the corrupts from within the system. More power to him, but that doesn’t negate the effort AK has put over the years.
Regarding tokenism and minority appeasement and in general, AAP has at best failed. GB pointed that out starkly in his earlier posts. That’s the toughest choice AK and AAP has to make in near future. This congress brand of secularism has done this country enough damage already. Hopefully AK and AAP could move away from them.
But assuming they are yet-another-sickular-party. Look at the candidates they are able to attract now and have given ticket too. Look at the agenda’s they are fighting these elections on. They are not hiding away from questions, their interviews don’t have to be prepped up.
I don’t really think we would see a AAP government in center in this decade, at best we have a chance at putting someone in parliament who ask difficult questions. If that can scare our Ambani’s and Vadra’s to loot us a just a little less, that in itself a good start.
@hemanshu – very well written. CAM.
If “Time Person of The Year” would be decided by an online poll, Kejriwal would have won that as well, as evident from the numbers. Online polls often don’t mean anything. For example, how many people in India would actually vote for Malala Yousafzai? How many people who voted for Modi or Kejriwal would be even aware of her? More specifically, how many Indians would vote for a non-Indian at all? I know several people who had voted for Taj Mahal in the “wonders of the world” poll apparently because it was patriotic to do so.
On another note, I had visited the TIME link several times, and at one point of time, it seemed that Modi is running away with the poll. The poll was rigged anyway, with both Modi and Kejriwal getting a few dozen votes every second, while the counters for leaders like Angela Merkel and Christine Lagarde hardly moved. TIME has claimed that it restored some credibility by removing duplicate votes from the same IP, but at the end of the day, the numbers are still a function of India’s humongous population. The only reasonably meaningful and partially accurate conclusion could be that Kejriwal is more popular than Modi among a certain section of the population but even that may not reflect in a constituency like Varanasi.
Soumik – Vatical does not have an Army. Those are Swiss Guards that you see.
OK you missed the obvious in the comparison between Kejriwal and the Pope….BOTH ARE SELLING IMAGINARY PRODUCTS….one is selling salvation from the worldly sins and the other one is selling salvation from the sinful politicians
I think you are somehow obsessed with kejri .Possibly because you never in your wildest dreams fathomed the Idea of one man shaking the entire Indian democracy like never before.Now that you cannot digest that it has happened, you choose to be the devils advocate and making every attempt to drag him through shit and mud and what not. These must be the signs of a sly and shrewd politician but a bigger part of me says ,its cowardice galore .
Kejriwal needs to be given credit for proving that there is another option. Of course it is difficult to move from lifelong opposition to everything to becoming the centre of everybody’s opposition. He would have fared better if he had been a bit more careful in choosing his friends.
IMO capitalist, opportunist, incompetent – all three have their share of Suresh Rainas who will follow them and nix a match or two for their Dhonis. However, the pseudo-intellectual arguments provided by AAPTARDS are as nauseating as the pseudo-secular holier-than-thou arguments provided by supports of a sickular party. Everybody indulges in image building. The only difference is one is exagerating his last job’s CTC – 5 Cr INR, the incompetent general is promising cheques which he can’t cash and the most inimical of them all is this bespectacled kid who is Ankit Fadia who has crafted his image after reading a Kevin Mitnick biography. I would take the first choice in this election. The third one seems a proxy. The second one is Robin Arryn who might still rule one day because he has inherited good generals to fight for him.
lol that is irony , bjp could not gather support this time, lmfao.. It gathered a large mass in the varanasi rally, they have huge online fb supporters (p.s. Who get paid to abuse and rant for b.j.p. ) then how cn they loose this online poll. They pay huge amount to the media,. Check aaj tak and its subsidaries. Delhi exit polls also bjp was supposed to win lol, though it won bt stepped back went they were askd to form a govt.
Whatever but i liked reading your post..
Get a life, your obsession with AK is telling. He won a poll and he has some influence. You cannot wish that away.
I’m apolitical, so I don’t really care about who won what.
However.
It’s nice to see Greatbong back. You’ve been missed.
Sometimes I wonder, will the violent Maoists/Naxalites like Sabyasachi Panda, Soni Sori and Binayak Sen, who joined AAP, go back to using kalashnikovs and landmines on innocent poor people, after the elections.
I see a few AAPtards here. Maybe some of them can pass this question to their leaders.
If you noticed the yes and no votes on poll chart, the yes votes for AK matched no votes for Modi and the yes votes for Modi matched no votes for AK. A total farce