Kejriwal gets a second chance at governance
Now that the Aam Aadmi Party has secured a resounding victory in the Delhi Assembly election, Mr Arvind Kejriwal and his team have the onerous responsibility of living up to the expectations of the people and delivering on the many populist promises they have made. The people of Delhi have reposed tremendous trust in the AAP leader and given him a second chance to make good his assurances. They have been extremely forgiving as well, setting aside his shenanigans of the past of occupying the streets on dharna as the Chief Minister, flinging largely unsubstantiated allegations against rivals, practising the politics of confrontation rather than cooperation for the larger good of the people, and maintaining a holier-than-thou attitude.
Mr Kejriwal has a golden opportunity to undo those immaturities and provide the people of Delhi effective and mature governance. To do that, he will have to shed his earlier attitude and work in close cooperation with the Centre. This is even more essential in the case of Delhi, which, being a quasi-State and a capital-State, is more dependent than the other States on the Union Government for the success of a host of governance issues. Mr Kejriwal must let bygones be bygones and concentrate on providing the people of the State the administration they deserve. Of course, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union Government too must discard old enmities and work in tandem with the Aam Aadmi Party regime to take Delhi forward on the path of progress and prosperity. There is no place anymore for needless confrontations — and the sooner the AAP and the BJP realise it the better it will be for everyone.
let us see if Mr Kejriwal, flush with his impressive victory, can rise above pettiness and demonstrate the conduct that is expected of a mature leader. The present moment is his, and he can get away by casting aspersions on his rival parties — he has claimed that “arrogance” demolished his foes. But once the dust settles and the serious business of governance begins, the people will judge him by different yardsticks. The sweeping mandate he has received will give him a decent ‘honeymoon' period, but it also vests on him a responsibility which is unprecedented in recent memory, at least in the context of Delhi politics. There are many instances of the voters mercilessly punishing those they had hoisted to the peak on account of the former being betrayed.
It must be conceded that the AAP's victory has a great deal to do with the effective election campaign it ran, during which it aggressively promoted the perception that Mr Kejriwal was the best bet for Delhi. Mr Kejriwal's public apology for having run away from governance within 49 days of being in power and his assurance that he would not repeat the mistake, took the sting out of the opposition parties' allegation that he was a political absconder. He also clearly managed to convince the voters that his street politics had been a compulsion in the interests of the people and not the first choice.
Besides, the AAP cadre penetrated every household — low income, middle income, high income, the slum dwellers, the minorities, the Scheduled Castes — with the simple message that the State needed a 'committed' leader and party which could provide an alternative kind of politics. That the AAP secured the support from across all sections (and not just the less-privileged groups and the minorities, which many believed it would limit itself to) is clear from not just the big numbers in its favour but also from the high voting percentage the State had recorded. Its strategy of connecting with the voters through small, mohalla meetings and ‘personal’ campaign style helped swing sentiments in its favour.
Meanwhile, the BJP has to seriously introspect on its monumental defeat. After all, it was just months ago when the party was seen to be sitting pretty in the State. It has now lost large sections of even its committed supporters, let alone having failed to draw new voters. In its humiliating setback, it will face a barrage of criticism — from the 'strategic mistake' of delaying the election in the hope that it could somehow stitch together a Government to conducting a confused and personalised campaign to infighting over the choice of chief ministership that may have led to an internal sabotage.
The party will no doubt analyse threadbare the reasons for the defeat — and what resulted in the drastic swing of people's opinion against it. There is no denying that at least some of the theories that are being floated on its shocking defeat have a basis. Given the considerable traditional base the BJP has had in the State even when it was down in the past, it is hard to believe that the pathetic slump in its seats could have happened without the play-out of factors that are extraneous to the public support it has had. Therefore, accountability must be fixed.
Nevertheless, it would be silly to assume that the loss is a colossal rejection of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his regime, or that it will definitely adversely impact the BJP in the Assembly elections to various States in the next few months, especially Bihar, which is slated to vote towards this year-end. It must be remembered that the BJP bounced back after a fistful of by-election setbacks in north India to win elections in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand, and to do well in Jammu and Kashmir. The dynamics are different, and they do not remain constant — as the Delhi example has shown. Merely because the AAP has stopped the BJP juggernaut in Delhi does not mean that the outcome will necessarily have a nationwide impact. The party will do well to concentrate on the future challenges even as it seeks to correct the wrongs that happened in the capital-State.
As for the Congress, the less said about its annihilation the better it would be. While nobody expected the party to do wonders, the total capitulation too wasn't expected. It failed to even retain the paltry number of seats it had won in 2013. The AAP must thank the Congress for that, because, what had once been the vote-bank of the Congress shifted lock, stock and barrel to Mr Kejriwal's party. Having been defeated in successive State elections, the party has been rendered completely irrelevant by the Delhi debacle. How and when it will emerge out of the pit, remains to be seen. Fresh questions are naturally being raised over the failed leadership of Mr Rahul Gandhi, because it is he who had handpicked Mr Ajay Maken to lead the campaign in Delhi. The fact that the BJP too has been humbled cannot be much of a consolation to the Congress. After all, the BJP at least rules at the Centre and has stable regimes in many States. In contrast, the Congress is getting pushed out from State after State.
Given its sweep, the AAP will have virtually no opposition in the Delhi Assembly. This can make things easy for the party, but it could also prove to be its undoing if Mr Kejriwal and his men assume the arrogance (of numbers) that they have accused their rivals of. It is easy to be swayed by the enormous victory. let’s hope, for the sake of the people of Delhi, that Mr Kejriwal seizes the historic moment and makes the best of it.