{"id":354908,"date":"2025-07-13T01:05:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-13T06:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=354908"},"modified":"2025-07-14T01:30:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-14T07:00:04","slug":"from-jantar-mantar-to-chandigarh-bungalows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/from-jantar-mantar-to-chandigarh-bungalows\/","title":{"rendered":"From Jantar Mantar to Chandigarh Bungalows"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"555\" height=\"312\" src=\"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2025\/07\/Arvind-Kejriwal-and-Others.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-354909\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2025\/07\/Arvind-Kejriwal-and-Others.jpg 555w, https:\/\/tehelka.com\/media\/2025\/07\/Arvind-Kejriwal-and-Others-300x169.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 555px) 100vw, 555px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Remember the good old days when Satyendar Jain along with his mentor Arvind Kejriwal,&nbsp; stormed Delhi politics armed only with idealism\u2014and the odd whistle&nbsp;stop rally? Fast-forward to today, and our once-on-a-mission maverick is quietly running Punjab\u2019s health show\u2026from his swanky government bungalow in Chandigarh. Yes, that\u2019s right: the very same man who famously duelled with bureaucratic red tape in Delhi is now pulling strings in Punjab\u2019s Health Department\u2014no scalpel needed. His former \u201cOfficer on Special Duty,\u201d Shaleen Mitra, has even decamped north to join him, suggesting this isn\u2019t just a weekend hobby.&nbsp;But Jain isn\u2019t alone in his Punjabi escapade. Delhi\u2019s ex-Deputy CM, Manish Sisodia, long champion of free textbooks, has slipped into an advisory role in Punjab\u2019s Education Department. And who could forget Reena Gupta\u2014once sparring verbally with Kejriwal\u2019s critics\u2014is now bossing around the state\u2019s Pollution Control Board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s like a political exchange program in reverse: Delhi\u2019s brain trust setting up shop amidst Punjab\u2019s lassi-loving heartland. Jasmine Shah, erstwhile vice&nbsp;chair of Delhi\u2019s Dialogue Commission, is now the \u201clead governance fellow\u201d (fancy!) in Punjab\u2019s IT wing. Meanwhile, Kamal Bansal has swapped pilgrimage panel meetings in Delhi for Tirth Yatra Samiti chairmanship in Punjab\u2014holy detours, indeed! Insiders whisper there are at least ten government flats in Chandigarh now occupied by these Delhi imports, who\u2019ve brought their own brand of \u201cprincipled\u201d bureaucracy. Critics chuckle that, once fighting the system, they\u2019re now\u2026the system. But hey, if you can\u2019t beat \u2019em, send in your most devoted ex-crusaders to run the show\u2014bungalow style.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Remember the good old days when Satyendar Jain along with his mentor Arvind Kejriwal,&nbsp; stormed Delhi politics armed only with idealism\u2014and the odd whistle&nbsp;stop rally? Fast-forward to today, and our once-on-a-mission maverick is quietly running Punjab\u2019s health show\u2026from his swanky government bungalow in Chandigarh. Yes, that\u2019s right: the very same man who famously duelled with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":354909,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1801],"tags":[19958,16005,19119],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354908"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354908"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":354911,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354908\/revisions\/354911"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/354909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}