New Delhi:
It is almost noon by the time Rakhi Bidlan, Delhi's minister for women and social welfare, walks into the Delhi government secretariat. (Bidlan is the original, correct spelling of her name, which she says was mistakenly converted to Birla.)
That is because her mornings are consumed here, in the narrow bylanes of Mangolpuri, the lower-middle class settlement in West Delhi where she grew up, dealing with petitioners from her constituency.
It is a setting she says validates her claim, of staying true to her roots, and of practicing the politics of change. She says she will always be girl from a small home in Mangolpuri, and not a
mantri.
But while the setting may be different, the idea of the 'janta darbar' is not. Her father takes us to a nearby temple sacred to the Valmikis, the Dalit subcaste to which Rakhi belongs, where a mini-secretariat has been created to deal with dozens of petitioners and favour-seekers.
Rakhi is not unfamiliar to how the system works: her father headed a Dalit association, and later joined the Congress. This, to some extent, explains her politically aware vocabulary. She says she is proud to be a member of the Valmiki community of Dalits, one that she says sweeps the homes of others before they clean their own home. But she rejects comparisons with the other Dalit icon, Mayawati.
Despite the political exposure, Rakhi seems uneasy about working with a system of which she has become a part.
She says she still thinks, as she did when part of the Anna Hazare movement, that the system is corrupt. But she clarifies, saying her own team of officials is clean.
Which is perhaps why, like her peers, Rakhi seems more focused, for now, on making field visits, for instance, to night shelters for the homeless. She says in just four-five days their condition has improved.
"Where they were once living with animals, today they have two blankets, and a TV for entertainment," she says.
But the rawness surfaces when asked to define policy visions, like her somewhat odd idea of using private security force to make Delhi safe for women. She says it is still in the draft stage.
Like many of her peers, Rakhi has already had a brush with controversy. In her case, she came under fire for filing an FIR after a cricket ball accidentally smashed her car window. The boys who were playing cricket were apparently made to apologise to the police, which drew criticism from the mainstream political parties.
But Rakhi says that she had no idea that some boys were behind the accident. She says she only filed the FIR since that would help her claim insurance money for a new mirror.
It has only been a week, and the style and content of Rakhi's governance may evolve. For the moment, the most powerful signal from the AAP ki Sarkar, comes from the symbolic value of a 26 year-old minister who lives in a tiny room in a lower income neighborhood, and promises to stay there.
But she has taken a government car. Rakhi defends the decision saying that her family of eight survives only on the salary of Rs 15,000 a month her mother earns a government sweeper. She says in this situation, 'If I have taken a government vehicle, then what's wrong in this?'