With
the elections knocking at the door in all four polls bound states of Rajasthan,
Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Delhi, both the BJP and the Congress is leaving
no stone unturned to either retain power or make an impressive comeback. Unlike
Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh where the fight will mostly be
bipolar between the Congress and the BJP, in Delhi, the political scenario
seems to be changing where the fight might well turn out to be triangular. If
the recent opinion polls are to be believed, the Aam Aadmi Party is all set to make an
impressive debut in electoral politics. However
to know what actually happens, we have to wait till November end and if the
polls are correct, then certainly Arvind Kejriwal and his team deserves an
applause. But the bigger question remains, after that, what?
If we closely analysis the turn of events, ever
since the AAP came into existence a year ago, Arvind Kejriwal has been
promising that the party will usher in a new kind of politics. That has also
been the running theme in all interactions that party leaders have had with the
public. They have been fanning across the city since August, meeting small
groups of people in public spaces. In all of them, brandishing the broom
– the party’s symbol which they say they asked for – the leaders vow to sweep
out all that is bad in Indian politics and bring in what they insist will be an
entirely new kind of politics, no matter how long it takes and regardless of
how the party fares in elections. Unfortunately, that is exactly where the AAP
promise flounders.
What they need to understand is that a new
political culture cannot just be about the way a party is organised or
functions. Nor can it be limited to symbolic gestures like shunning red
beacons. It also has to be about the way a party engages with the voters. As of now, there is little evidence till now that
the `new’ political style and culture that AAP promises is anything more than
the way the party is managed and the behaviour of its elected representatives.
So, the party has a transparent and democratic organisational structure; only
candidates with a clean reputation are chosen in a very transparent manner;
elected representatives will not use red beacons on their vehicles or live in
sprawling government bungalows and be surrounded by a phalanx of security personnel.
The kerfuffle over a key member, sociologist Yogendra Yadav, being sacked from
the University Grants Commission (UGC) is at variance with these lofty ideals,
but more on that later.
To be honest, the AAP is not the only
non-traditional party to have a strong ethics code in place. Several new
do-gooder parties that emerged on the political landscape after 2007 are doing
the same – fielding squeaky clean candidates, taking donations only by cheque,
putting up lists of donors on their websites. It’s just that the AAP has
managed to grab national attention, thanks to the India Against Corruption
Movement, in a way that the others did not. It
is only the legacy of the Anna Hazare led movement which is helping it make
rounds in the mainstream media which is since then moniotoring each and every
move of the members of the movement especially those with the most know face.
In our Indian political understanding, when one
talks about old-style politics, the association is always with caste-religion-community
based politics and economically ruinous populism. A new kind of political
culture should entail a movement away from such divisive and fiscally imprudent
politics. Instead, the AAP has only continued down the same path, down to some
well-known Muslim figures joining the party at a public function. At that do,
Kejriwal admitted that there were already a large number of Muslims working for
the party. He then gave a somewhat unconvincing explanation that this special
function was organised to highlight the politics of hate that was taking centre
stage.
Couldn’t this be done in any other way than putting an AAP cap on top of
a skull cap that one of those who joined wore? How is this kind of tokenism any
different from what mainstream parties do?
Similarly if we take a look at the pamphlets that
the AAP candidate have been distributing in their areas. The promises they make
include waiving of water bills and providing 700 litres of water a day to every
family free of charge, halving of electricity bills and regularisation of
unauthorised colonies. Where is the new paradigm in this? A couple of months
back, the Congress government in Delhi regularised a host of unauthorised
colonies. The BJP, which has been out of power for 15 years, has also been
promising cheaper power bills. Nor is the AAP lagging in making tall promises.
One of the ads it has placed on the back of autorickshaws laments the lack of
security for women in the capital and promises – hold your breath – an
exclusive commando force for women!
As far as the issue of Prof Yogendra Yadav’s
expulsion from the UGC is concerned, though many might argue that it was not
justifiable and was thus a very idiotic move by the Ministry of HRD. But the
idiocy and meanness of the human resource development ministry does not
diminish the fact that Yadav is also not entirely in the clear. He had been
appointed to the UGC as an academician, which is what all commission members
are. When he joined the AAP, he should have quit the UGC. Yadav says he had
offered to resign last year and that the UGC told him to stay on and that his
removal has been done not by the UGC but the ministry. But this is a kind of
hair-splitting that does not speak well of the leading light of a party taking
the moral high ground all the time. If he had insisted on stepping down from
the UGC when he formally joined the AAP that would have been something
completely different from the way normal politicians behave.
In India, I said this before and would like to
reiterate it again, as far as the elections are concerned, corruption is not as
big an issue as it is being made out to be. It is an issue only if people see
that the politicians are concentrating only on filling their personal coffers
without addressing their problems. There are innumerable such instances which
could be cited where despite having a corrupt track record, people have repetitively
voted the same representatives saying that they might be corrupt but they have
fulfilled their promises and that they say matters at the end of the day. Let’s
face it: honest people don’t get elected; `effective’ people do. If they are
also honest, that’s an added bonus.
Right now, the popular disenchantment with the
mainstream parties is so overwhelming that the AAP is getting away with mere
marketing gimmicks, passing off the same old model as a radically different
product. There is, of course, the matter of whether the public really wants a
different political discourse. There’s no getting away from the fact that
people are not really concerned with their elected representatives framing and
legislating sensible policies. All they want is for them to do favours –
recommend a child to a school here, stop the demolition of an illegal
construction there, swing something somewhere else. The AAP too has probably realised this and that is
why it is not departing from old-style paternalistic, sops-driven politics.
Right now, it’s only USP is the `added bonus’ – people with clean reputations.
But if these people don’t deliver on the things the public wants,
disillusionment will soon set in. And then the AAP will be just another party.
So the larger question that persists is whether Arvind Kejriwal and his team are
prepared for that?
For all sorts of bouquets and brickbats feel free
to leave a comment below or mail me at author.vish94@gmail.com
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