IIT, IIM alumni come together to push clean governance in Delhi

Plan a body akin to Bangalore Political Action Committee, backed by likes of Murthy and Mazumdar-Shaw, to fund clean political candidates

Last week, an upscale Delhi hotel hosted 20-odd professionals — all IIT and IIM alumni. This was neither a business meeting nor an informal get-together. These executives and entrepreneurs, true to the flavour of the times, had come together to discuss ways of achieving a “clean governance” for their city, Delhi.

Their idea was setting up in Delhi an organisation similar to the already-successful Bangalore Political Action Committee (BPAC). Many see this as an extension of the anti-corruption wave that hit the country — Delhi, in particular — after a movement led by Anna Hazare and the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party’s surprise victory in the Delhi Assembly election that sent both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress party into a tizzy.

The Bangalore Political Action Committee was started a year ago with the backing of industry representatives, such as Biocon Chairperson & Managing Director Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, former Infosys chief financial officer T V Mohandas Pai and Infosys co-founder N R Narayana Murthy, to improve the quality of governance in that city.

The Delhi Political Action Committee’s (DPAC’s) primary objective will be providing transparent and clean funding to political candidates. “We will be party-agnostic; a candidate we back could be from any party — be it the Aam Aadmi Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party or the Congress,” said a Delhi-based entrepreneur who is part of this initiative. The committee is going to devise a reference-check mechanism to decide on who it wants to support financially. “We may, someday, evolve ourselves into a body whose certification will itself render credibility to candidates,” he added.

To begin with, the committee will form a trust with contribution from all its members. The aim will be garnering around Rs 200 crore. A formal announcement about the initiative is likely to be made in a month or so; the committee hopes to launch itself before the general elections.

“We associate ourselves with a pre-AAP movement but we are apolitical. We want to bring educated people into the executive. That will definitely improve the quality of delivery and governance,” one of the members of DPAC said. The inclusion of people like Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, also an alumnus of IIT-Kharagapur, was a good sign and showed educated people were now taking interest in politics, he added.

DPAC will also draw inspiration from its Bangalore counterpart in expanding its agenda of working towards pushing the overall agenda of Delhi’s development.
INCUBATING CLEAN POLITICS
Things that DPAC will do

• Create a trust with contribution from each member
• Financially support “clean candidates”
• Devise a mechanism to conduct reference check on political candidates