Remember the Vuvuzela? The jelly-coloured plastic trumpet that made football fans go nuts during the 2010 Football World Cup? Well, let me recount my own experience for the benefit of those who may have forgotten this cultural artefact and the sway it held over a blissful summer month not that long ago.

Friday – June 11, 2010. The excitement was fever-pitch and as the opening ceremony got over and I settled before the TV with my pizza and Coke willing the referee to blow the whistle, I noticed a strange drone perforating my eardrums. Mild and irritating at first, I put it down to the vagaries of a satellite link. Then, all of a sudden, as Tshabalala, the South African midfielder lurched forward with the ball and broke through the Mexican defence, I thought the drawing room had been invaded by a swarm of killer bees, with some naughty ones entering and exiting various body orifices at will, making me yank and brush my flaps with rapid swipes of my hands – a little like Russell Crowe in A Beautiful mind.

I remember Googling for answers during the half-time break, by which time the swarm had whooshed through the Ozone hole and enveloped mother earth entirely. Then I Wikipediaed this strange sounding name – Vuvuzela – and learnt it was a plastic horn used by South African football fans.

Over the next few days, the Vuvuzela took over the discourse altogether. The English and the Germans hated it while the Brazilians saw it as the death of Jogo Bonito. But as the World cup progressed and the Vuvuzela gained notoriety, ill-made, pleasant sounding (and therefore ill-made) remakes started appearing outside Palika Bazaar in Delhi. Soon, kids were distraught if their return gifts turned out to be anything but these garish plastic horns. Within a week everyone possessed a Vuvuzela and was blowing into it for his dinner to his pay hike. The Vuvuzela had become indispensable. We couldn’t think of watching a football match without that drone bursting through our TV woofers.

And this is how humans behave the world over. Anything new is considered an assault. When it refuses to die or go away, we accept it. Then, ever so slowly, it begins to grow on us. Bapu put it better: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

But where’s the Vuvuzela now – that obnoxious horn we hated so much only to fall in love with later? Well, as it happens one man is busy emptying his lungs out into the damn thing. Plucky little fellow! Goes by the name of Arvind Kejriwal. Indeed, Vuvuzela, and not the Jhadoo, could so easily have been his party’s election symbol. But who knows, it still might – if the UPA in all its wisdom decides to hold the Indian elections in South Africa because of the Indian elections here. Notwithstanding, Delhi is turning out to be a litmus test for one man and his ragtag group of volunteers and do-gooders. Or is it?

The Vuvuzela bleater is everywhere, on TV, radio, newspapers, even magazine covers. Bharatiya Janata Party supporters see this as an attempt by the Congress to divide the anti-Congress vote. Indeed, they think the Aam Aadmi Party is nothing more than a B team of the Congress. I find this argument irrational for many reasons. First, it presupposes a two-party state, the parties being the Congress and the BJP. Second, any new party would naturally wrench some votes away from one of the established two. The AAP did not break away from a larger party like Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena or Sharad Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party did, for it to be able to dilute the mother party’s vote share. The AAP is a new party and is entitled to impress upon the voters so they may give the new entrant a go. To call an entrant a subsidiary of the established party is to deny Indians the right to form a party of their own and fight elections. And third, wasn’t it the BJP that coined the catchy slogan: Sabko parkha, humko parkhein (You’ve tried everyone else, now try us)? What makes them deride a newbie asking to be given a chance?

That said, the AAP can certainly do more to allay the fears of the undecided electorate. In October of 2012, I wrote an article on Arvind Kejriwal, impressed by the man’s fearlessness to tackle the corrupt and the mighty. A year has passed and while I still hold much the same opinion of him, it cannot be denied that he is beginning to ripen at all the wrong places. There’s even a danger he might become a seasoned politician at the end of it – learn the tricks of the trade, as they say. To choose candidates on the basis of their caste or religion in order to woo voters – Matia Mahal, Seelampur, Ballimaran, Okhla, when a shining example exists within the AAP of not succumbing to this – Shazia Ilmi is fighting from a majority constituency, to categorically reject the judicial version of the Batla encounter and call it fake, to dole out tickets to politicians who’ve honed their skills working for “corrupt” parties or worked as their representatives for decades, to welcome more than a dozen politicians who had a chance to fight corruption in their erstwhile parties but didn’t, to calling an ex-chief of the Indian Army an opportunist and one having bad intentions, is, I’m afraid, not blazing a new trail but rather following an old one.

Kejriwal believes – and because of him so does the entire AAP – that politicians are corrupt by their very nature. For this reason, the AAP is willing to talk glowingly of Ashok Khemka and Durga Shakti Nagpal but has little to say of Jayaprakash Narayan. Can someone please explain to Mr Kejriwal that Narayan’s Lok Satta party never once clamoured for Jan Lokpal – differing on many key components, besides and yet, in its own non-revolutionary, non-aamaran anshan way, proposed the Anti-Corruption bill, opposed populist schemes, welcomed FDI in retail, pressed for infrastructure development, and developed a comprehensive plan for urban centres?

It is not very often that revolutionaries make for great leaders. This is understandable. A life’s mission, when fulfilled, can lead to hubris and reticence. Perhaps Bapu understood it more than most when he argued for the disbanding of the Congress post-Independence. Kejriwal should help bring about a total revolution in politics, something that politicians like Narayan and perhaps many others are trying to do, and not embroil the whole county in a total revolution. Besides, there are ample ways to catch a thief. No one can doubt the sincerity of our Supreme Court in going after crooks and dacoits. Yes, it takes time, yes things aren’t perfect, but the answer to this is to improve its functioning, to strengthen the existing institution, not to demand immediately the erection of a second. Institutions aren’t cars – one can’t conjure up a new model every year.

This hurry is what worries me. Let’s look at Delhi, where the AAP is in a great position to win many of the 70 seats it is contesting. What is its core constituency? Harried people who are fed up of corruption, men and women on the fringes of our society who don’t get enough power or water, drivers who don’t get good roads, car owners who can’t get enough parking…

Does one really need a total revolution for all this? I am not so sure. The simple answer to all urban problems is good governance. The AAP has left no stone unturned in lambasting the state of Delhi for rampant corruption and malpractices, but let’s not forget that Delhi has a functional lokayukta, something that the AAP believes would address the issue of corruption. It clearly hasn’t. And this is where I feel the Vuvuzela blowers haven’t yet given their future a serious thought. It’s a good and honest beginning but it is just that – a beginning. Kejriwal’s book, Swaraj, which talks of referendums and gram sabhas and power to the people in every sense of the word, can turn into a motorcycle diary if one is not careful.

Take for example the issue of Land. Swaraj says: “We are seeking a change in the law that directs a company to put up an application for permission to set up a factory in a gram sabha in whose vicinity the land falls. His application for permission will then be decided in the gram sabhas in whose vicinity the land falls.”

Or of Water: “The water sources that fall under the boundaries of a village will automatically be treated as the property of the village. No decision should be taken, like building a dam, on large water resources like river, without the consent of the village sabhas.”

Does this mean that the decision to construct a nuclear plant or a radio telescope or a dam will rest solely on the gram sabhas? I have tried to explore these and other important issues in an interview with Kejriwal’s trusted colleague and confidant Shazia Ilmi in the accompanying article.

Kejriwal may have now backtracked a little on the issue of referendum – after having demanded it on the question of FDI in retail, but the fact remains that it is impossible to bring about total revolution without these instruments, something that Swaraj itself stresses: “If five percent of the gram sabhas on the district level pass a proposal then the state government will have to send that proposal to all villages of the district. If fifty percent or more of the gram sabhas ratify that resolution then the state government is duty bound to accept that resolution even if it requires the change in existing law”.

Democracy doesn’t simply mean power to the people. It means power to the people to elect a leader who will, in times rough, take unpopular decisions for the greater good. Plebiscites and Referendums can wreak havoc in a nation as diverse as ours. Disputes over land, over religion, over river waters, over language, if resolved through the will of the majority, have the power to break this country into 600 principalities all over again. We no longer have a Patel – and his statue, howsoever tall, will be of little help. It was a dark day for democracy in Switzerland when they banned the Minarets, as dark as the day when they decided to stay neutral during World War II. Leaders don’t go for referendums. Leaders don’t stay neutral. To be neutral is actually to take sides.

This country is alive and kicking only because it has functional courts. Swift delivery of justice far supersedes any other human requirement, for everything from water to electricity to voting rights to the construction of a Ram temple rests solely on the verdict delivered by men and women entrusted with the task of delivering justice. Bereft of them is a land where referendum and anarchy walk hand-in-hand, are bedfellows.

Warts and all, Kejriwal needs to be applauded for what he has achieved in such short a span of time. Something truly remarkable is happening in the Indian political scene – he has begun to force his adversaries to field unimpeachable opponents against him. But what he needs to understand – and understand fast – is that he is nothing more than a man who aspires to be an honest politician. Strangely, he gives this much less credit than it deserves. In this day and age, I cannot think of a loftier goal and a more worthy achievement.