David and Goliath redux
The outcome of the Delhi Assembly elections has taken even the most discerning of psephologists and the most ardent of supporters of the Aam Aadmi Party by surprise. The speed and amplitude of the turn-around in the Party's political fortunes hardly have any parallel in the electoral history of India. Who would have thought it possible a couple of months ago that the all conquering BJP juggernaut will come to a grinding halt in the National Capital and will refuse to budge despite all the frenetic heaving and pushing by the full force of the central government? The legendary combat of David and Goliath has been re-enacted in the electoral arena of Delhi.
The battle for Delhi had been made into a personal combat between a charismatic Narendra Modi, prime minister, three-term chief minister and architect of the celebrated Gujarat model of development, and a woolly-headed Arvind Kejriwal, non descript former bureaucrat with anarchist tendencies and the tag of a deserter.
Drunk on their successive electoral victories, the master strategists of the BJP made the fatal mistake of overlooking the inroads being made into their bastions by the AAP cadres and volunteers while their government dithered on holding mid-term elections to the Delhi Assembly. The leadership of the Aam Aadmi Party was quicker on the draw and took advance action for the battle to come. It apologised for its past mistakes without demur and actively engaged with the electorate of Delhi to formulate a constituency-wise manifesto. A complacent BJP thought that the potent mix of communally charged rhetoric, Modi's brand image, and unlimited election spend would suffice to sway the voters of Delhi. Kiran Bedi was only brought into the fray at the last minute to serve as a scapegoat, when a rout seemed inevitable.
The scale of the Aam Aadmi Party's electoral triumph has raised the expectations and aspirations of the people in Delhi and beyond to the stratosphere. It has only made the fledgling formation's task more onerous. The Party can ill afford to compromise on its core values and stray from its avowed standards.
Thankfully, the Aam Aadmi Party has learnt from its all too brief experience of acquiring, exercising and abdicating political power, and the abject bid to regain it at any cost. The Party leadership has also internalised the lessons from the debacle of the Lok Sabha elections when driven by reckless ambition it had sought to project itself as the national alternative to established political parties, even though it had neither the resources nor the organisation to mount a half-serious challenge in more than a dozen constituencies.
There are even more important lessons which it will do well to draw from the experience of contemporary and past practitioners of real politic. The electorate, that has been so generous in rewarding the Party leadership's humility, transparency, commitment to probity in public life and sensitivity to the quotidian problems of the underprivileged, can be equally severe in sanctioning arrogance, deviousness, venality, indifference, and deviant behaviour of any other kind. The AAP has to remember that its conduct while in power will be judged by standards that are particular to it. Other political parties have no pretensions of practising value-based politics and the public also accepts them as seekers of power for partisan and personal gains.
As Arvind Kejriwal readily acknowledges, the Party is doomed if it allows this unprecedented success, and the adulation that comes in its wake, to go to its head. In the euphoria induced by a virtual annihilation of the opposition in the Assembly, which would have been inconceivable in a proportional representation system, the Party legislators and cadres run the risk of losing their footing and becoming arrogant and overbearing, but being the uncrowned head of the Party, Arvind is most at risk.
One may recall that in the heady days of the India Against Corruption agitation, when a timorous UPA government tottered on the verge of capitulation, Kiran Bedi, who then was Arvind's close comrade-in arms, had taken to referring to him as `Chhota Gandhi' in the meetings of volunteers and public rallies. Now that he has led a floundering, cash starved, rag-tag combination to a monumental victory over the mighty BJP, there will be no dearth of self-serving courtiers and sycophants who will spare no effort to build a personality cult around him. He cannot allow his guard to slip even for a moment.
It is also imperative that the leadership, which is no longer distracted by the hustle and bustle of electoral engagement, takes up the twin tasks of instauring inner party democracy and putting in place a robust organisational structure in right earnest. The tendency for centralisation of authority has been the bane of the Indian political establishment. Eventually, the high command gets ring-fenced by an inner coterie, which strives to block the channels of communication with the rank and file of the party. This noxious tendency must not be allowed to take root in the Aam Aadmi Party, given its commitment to restoring power to the people and establishing Swaraj. Let a beginning be made with the democratisation of decision-making in the Party.
The AAP government also needs to subject the Party's electoral promises to a close scrutiny and segregate those which it can fulfil on its own and others which require the support of the central government. A hierarchy of these pledges should be established and a time-bound action plan for their implementation drawn up. The rest should be discarded without much ado. The electorate will not mind, provided the pragmatic considerations underlying the decision are duly explained.
- Kamal Kant Jaswal
