The Aam Aadmi wallahs don’t constitute a threat to the entrenched polity. They are loners, hardly social aggregators who derive their energy from rejection, disruption and disturbance — they promise to break a mould, but not build anything new
As a fervent advocate of community action, I have witnessed with growing disappointment the dissolution of the potent anti-corruption campaign and its metamorphosis into a partisan, splinter group which barely resembles its original avatar and then, more tragicomically, its face saving catharsis into a political entity.
I speak from the benefit of experience, not conjecture having been responsible for actualizing this theory in Gurgaon under similar conditions in 2004. large swathes of the new middle class, resentful of what little they got in return for their investment in the political class, unified under a banner, formed a new political outfit, conducted primaries to select a candidate, fought an election and lost handsomely with the only solace that we ruled the tabloids and broadsheets for a while.
What I have learnt could have been instructive to our young friends, but alas! the pleasure of reinventing the wheel.
So, if they look a bit like Don Quixote, forgive them, for although they may have the wrong sort of apparatus to attack the problem, they do have the right intention. At least, that seems to be the refrain among a number of sensible people around who argue that the Aam Aadmi Party is the answer to India’s ills and an imminent threat to the established political order, particularly in Delhi where they intend to chance their luck.
Corruption is an issue but it can’t be the nucleus of any long term formation simply because it cannot be monopolised by any party or group. Even if we keep aside the right of all parties to claim corruption as a key ingredient in their vote catching strategy, the fact is that corruption is also not a permanent state of being. It is transitory, perceived as less and more at different times of history and politics and can actually reduce over time as transparency is injected into the system making the basis of association around this theme redundant. Those that argue that it could be the start of something meaningful as time progresses forget that time in politics is a harsh taskmaster and more often than not, such boutique parties do not survive the vagaries of time for a number of reasons organizational, electoral, pecuniary and out of the limitations of human resolve and faith.
The bigger threat to AAP, however comes from within. leaders of parties that coalesce around an individual have more often than not exhibited tendencies that border on the dictatorial, even megalomaniacal. Since such parties are designed around an undemocratic template in origin, they progressively fall prey to the insidious rot of the egomaniacal behavior of its leadership. More often than not, such individuals exhibit their weaknesses early in their careers and one way to evaluate this is to check on their behavioural antecedents. You will find that they are anti-establishment and have an aptitude for breaking out of and tearing down organisations rather than building them. They are loners, not social aggregators and of a nihilistic orientation rather than of amenable nature. Their belief system is not synchronous with cooperation but derives its energy from rejection, disruption and disturbance — all wonderful attributes when you want to break a mould, none when you want to build anything.
It is a seminal contradiction of electoral activity that it is only when people are angry that such movements and initiatives crop up and yet this anger itself ensures that such initiatives fail the test of votes. This is because when people are angry they do not vote for, but against, a regime - and in that they vote for the best established player capable of unseating the incumbent. In Haryana, when people were angry with the Chautala regime, they conspired to vote them out overriding all caste combinations. Similarly, when UP had had enough of Mayawati, traditional caste and religious interests intersected to ensure that the best placed to unseat the BSP was voted in. Nothing new that I am suggesting, except the principle that voters are intelligent: they don’t waste their votes and that votes are cast to defeat and unseat rather than anoint and appoint in such circumstances.
Since the first part of the analogy holds — that the AAP is a flower of the anti-corruption movement and a result of the angst of the people at the serial scamming by the UPA, it stands to reason that an angry people will follow that other part of the equation too — they will vote, to vote out the Congress. Delhi is traditionally a bipartisan citadel. No third entity has survived to any reasonable degree. In that scheme, the AAP is a hindrance for the angry voter, a liability, not a panacea because it compromises the chances of voting out the Congress by splintering the vote. logistical realities cannot be overtaken by romantic promises of poetic possibilities. Vote gathering is a serious enterprise and it follows rules like any other practice.
There are many reasons to fault the AAP as it has mutated into a political entity. It came out of a truly broad based movement and yet it suffered repeated assaults from minorities, later caste banks and finally its core constituency was reduced dramatically from what it was earlier. The simple math is that it shed its support base by the bushels by the time it became a political movement. From a campaign that we all owned, and wanted to be a part of, it became the pipe dream of a few followers of a pied piper.
To top it all, a series of gaffes, antics and attempts to corner media attention misfired. An electricity reconnection exercise in South Delhi slum came back to haunt the poor man they set out to make a model of bravado, when he was slapped with a case of illegal re-connection and attempt at theft. A 14-day protracted fast to garner support from people to not pay their power bills fizzled out without a whimper and no support. The lokpal is all but forgotten. Nothing that was started ended. Nothing promised was delivered. Zany antics, crazy solutions and ad hoc ideas make for good distractions, but wannabe politicians with such high octane dreams do not a dependable party make.
Sanjay Kaul | BJP spokesperson