When CJP first started appearing on my social-media feed, I wasn't particularly interested.
It seemed like another campaign that had suddenly gone viral. Then youngsters gathered at Jantar Mantar. The movement grew. Sonam Wangchuk joined.
My reaction was scepticism.
When a people's movement becomes this large, political ambition is difficult to resist.
Perhaps that reaction comes from my own generation's experience.
We have seen this before
I remember the Anna Hazare movement and the anger against corruption.
Most of us weren't at Jantar Mantar. We lived with that anger silently — frustrated by corruption, poor governance and a system that never seemed to improve.
We wanted the movement to succeed because we wanted India to improve.
Then Arvind Kejriwal entered politics.
This isn't a judgement on what followed. My point is simpler: once a citizens' movement becomes a political party, its priorities inevitably change.
There are elections to win, candidates to defend and power to retain.
Social responsibility may remain, but now it must coexist with political survival.
That history made me suspicious of CJP.
Then my Gen Z son made me see something I had missed.
My son wasn't watching another protest
My son has just passed Class 12. He was genuinely anguished.
He kept telling me: there are Class 10 and 12 students there. There are 19-, 20- and 25-year-olds protesting.
To me, they were protesters on a screen.
To him, they were his generation.
Young people have every right to protest. Their anger shouldn't be dismissed merely because they are young.
But that makes the responsibility of older organisers greater, not smaller.
When the first serious confrontation happened and tear gas was fired, I believe the more experienced people in CJP should have stopped and reassessed.
Not end the movement. Not surrender.
End the protest for that day.
A 19-year-old swept up in a movement may want to continue. A 35- or 40-year-old leader should know when the risk has changed.
Leadership is not only about knowing when to bring people onto the streets.
Sometimes it is knowing when to take them home.
Then #SchoolTheekKaro changed my question
This is where CJP becomes much more interesting to me.
Take a neglected government school.
Dirty toilets. Poor meals. Broken facilities.
CJP arrives. The problem is filmed. Media attention follows. Officials realise they are being watched.
Suddenly the school is cleaned. Better food appears. Things begin moving.
Perhaps some of it is managed for the cameras. Perhaps children are even brought from elsewhere to present a better picture.
But doesn't even that reveal something?
The system could do better. It simply wasn't doing it.
If public scrutiny can improve one school, why stop at one?
Take up 100 schools.
Then hospitals.
Roads.
Colleges.
Document the problem. Name the responsible authority. Return after a month.
Ask one wonderfully simple question:
Theek hua ya nahi?
#SchoolTheekKaro could become #IndiaTheekKaro.
And it shouldn't matter who governs.
BJP? Ask questions.
Congress? Ask the same questions.
Anyone else? Same standard.
That kind of movement could become a powerful watchdog precisely because it has no government of its own to defend.
But Anna Hazare left us another lesson
There is a problem with my argument.
Anna Hazare protested again after 2011. He went on hunger strike again.
India didn't respond the same way.
The crowds shrank. The cameras moved on.
Movements can lose their moment.
That may be the strongest argument for CJP eventually entering politics: public attention fades, while political power gives you the authority to act.
But political power extracts its own price.
Once CJP contests elections, it will have candidates to protect, elections to win and perhaps eventually its own government to defend.
Can a watchdog remain the same watchdog after it enters the house?
CJP's decision not to immediately form a political party therefore reassured me, even if politics remains an option.
Why rush?
First test the power it already has.
Take #SchoolTheekKaro further. Try it with hospitals, roads and colleges. See whether sustained public scrutiny can actually make government work better.
If it can, scale it.
India already has plenty of people who want to govern it.
What we have far fewer of are people organised enough to make whoever governs India do the job properly.
CJP has the attention of young India today.
Before converting that attention into votes, perhaps it should try converting it into something else:
#IndiaTheekKaro.
