The Lok Sabha Elections 2019 was not only the elections to choose Government but was a battle of nationalists with anti-nationalists. Whereas anti-nationals tried to spread their propagandas nationals kept on busting their propaganda. One such propaganda spread was about the candidate from Delhi East Aatishi Marlena. It was said that she is the one who has revolutionized the education system in Delhi. She is an educated and scholar and was presented as the best candidate
What is the definition of good or best candidate actually? Is one gauged as best candidate by seeing his/ her degree. If this is the case, then Kapil Sibbal who studied in Harvard, P.Chidambaram who studied in Harvard, Salman Khurshid who had studied in Oxford University are all good candidates but in reality, we know how good they are.
According to me, a good candidate is not the one who is having a lot of degrees but is the one who interacts with the people at the ground, understand their problems and think for the betterment of his/ her people. He is the one who possesses the following qualities.
Honesty
Integrity
Compassion &
Confidence
Is Aatishi a good candidate?
Before elections were announced, had you been to any street of East Delhi and asked who is Aatishi Marlena? You would have found that people having a look of confusion on their face. No one knew Aatishi Marlena. This is not a quality of a good candidate
After the elections were announced, tons of Opeds, Articles and columns were written about her great reforms in Delhi education. These opinion makers created a narrative around her great work about which people had no idea. They said Aatishi has changed the education system in Delhi. The reality is nothing has changed. There has been hardly a difference of few percent in XIIth standard results. For the past 2 years, the difference between the pass percentage of Xth class, the private and government school has fallen to a drastic 20%.
It shows due to Aatishi’s reforms Delhi government school has performed worse than during Sheila Dixit’s term. Some of her other reform include till 2018th batch less than a third of government schools in Delhi have science stream according to Times of India report but other report has presented that there is a shortage of 40,000 teachers in Delhi government schools. Also, the AAP Government has cut funding of 28 colleges of Delhi Universities
Aatishi Marlena did a press conference and said Gambhir has two voter IDs and his nomination should be rejected which was far away from the fact. She filed a court case and it didn’t come in her favor. Then she alleged Gambhir is using his duplicate for campaigning. This was really a funny point put forth that could have been never given by any sensible candidate
Atishi then did a press conference where she cried and slandered Gambhir saying he distributed pamphlets with derogatory comments against her. This was the last nail in the coffin of her victory. It was like “Cutting your own leg with an axe” moment for her. This was a consolidation of votes in favor of Gambhir. All his former teammates supported him. All the good work he had done in the past came out. There she lost other qualities that make a good candidate. (Integrity and Honesty)
Atishi Marlena even asked the voters to vote for “Goondas” but don’t vote for BJP. This does make one wonder, how clean Atishi Marlena actually is as a politician.
Apart from having a good education, there is nothing about Atishi that makes her a good candidate. Voters don’t vote by the perception and narrative that is built by the upper-class liberals, who think that only they know what is good for poor voters. Voters have started challenging the narrative of the so-called liberals. That’s the reason Atishi lost.
Credits: Anupam Sharma
Niharika
