Chetan Bhagat Writes: They Once Took The Delhi Metro To Swearing In, Now AAP Ministers Live First Class

A quick online check reveals an economy class return ticket to London costs Rs 45,000 for next week. A business class ticket, which gets you flat beds, lounges and exotic wines, costs around Rs 2 lakh.

However, even this mode of travel was not good enough for one AAP minister, going by news reports.

He preferred to travel first class, which is a whopping Rs 4 lakh to London. Of course, ministers don't pay for these tickets themselves. They charge it to the government, so in effect, the taxpayer pays for it. The reason for travel (there have been other trips to Brazil, Finland and more) is often flimsy 〞 random seminars, casual student body invites, anything that gets them out of the world's most polluted city I guess.

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And, of course, first class is just more comfortable. You get four more inches of seat width and ten more inches of legroom. Most important, the wine selection is better. And there's more exclusivity. Even CEOs travel business class. First class is usually for billionaires, big movie stars and, of course, the great take-metro-to swearing-in-ceremony AAP.

This would all be really funny, if this were not real. This is about a real party that literally arose from the streets. This is about real Indians who gave AAP their trust and hope. We Indians stood up for corruption, threw out a scam-tainted government and backed a new party. A party who we thought would care for Indians. A party who wanted to show simplicity as a virtue.

The same party now plunders a poor nation's wealth to buy first-class tickets for fraudulent boondoggles. The leader of the party of course, watches all this, even as he points fingers and throws accusations at anyone else who dares criticise them.

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No, AAP's shenanigans are no longer funny.

It is one of the saddest moments in Indian politics. For, the AAP dream is shattered. The betrayal hurts. It is also uncomfortable to deal with. It tells us that it wasn't just the fault of the Congress. Perhaps we as a nation are full of cheats, liars, thugs and plunderers. It's just about getting the opportunity to do so. When AAP was on the street, it hated conspicuous consumption and waste of state resources. In power, it wants to travel first-class and sample Bordeaux wines. It shows that looting the nation never bothered these leaders of AAP. What bothered them was that they were not getting a chance to do so. Well, they have it now. Well done.

Already, several AAP ministers are tainted with charges ranging from corruption, rape and faking degrees. This abuse of office for personal luxury is just another example of one thing 每 AAP has failed. In fact, AAP is likely to become, if not already, worse than the existing political parties.

So what went wrong? Why did the Indian dream break? And what can we learn from it?

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First, we created AAP when we were angry about immense corruption. We somehow assumed if there is a face we trust at the top, the party would never be corrupt. We were wrong.

The lesson is this: to fix corruption, you need to make the government more accountable, not merely replace it or create new parties.

Second, the desire to win for AAP cost them everything. In the last Delhi elections, they selected candidates on one factor 每 winnability. The biggest asset of AAP, that they can make good people from society win, was gone. In fact, the good people were thrown out of the party. Looters, goons, rapists, frauds were invited in, as long as they could get some votes. AAP won, but lost its core 每 their values of integrity, ethics and honesty. And once the river is polluted, it is very hard to clean it again. Remember how people quit Apple and Google to join AAP? Do you hear of anyone else doing that lately? Never compromise an organization's core values 每 even if it means slower growth.

Finally, the lesson for all us Indians is to not give up hope. Yes, AAP took us for a first-class ride. It is a bitter truth to face.

It doesn't, however mean, nothing can ever change in this country. We must move on, and work to keep any government accountable.

For AAP, the only lesson is to acknowledge reality and fix itself. Calling Modi names isn't going to make things any better. Taking a hard look within might. Maybe they could do that on their first class flights, as they hover high above Delhi over some nice, Aam Aadmi vintage wine.