Rajouri debacle brings AAP back to reality

IN focussing almost entirely on waging war on Narendra Modi, Kejriwal has taken his eye off the more humdrum, but nevertheless crucial, aspects of public administration. He, like many others before him, has so far failed to make the all-important transiti

Thanks to the growing centralisation of the news industry around the National Capital Region, there is an understandable tendency to focus disproportionately at doorstep happenings. This may explain why the electoral drubbing of the Aam Aadmi Party in the Rajouri Gardens by-election for the Delhi Assembly has been the subject of intense scrutiny.

In the past, it was its geographical proximity to the national political centre that allowed AAP to create an impression that it was a growing national phenomenon. This was most in evidence during the run-up to 2014 general election when the possibility of AAP securing around 100 Lok Sabha seats and Arvind Kejriwal defeating Narendra Modi in Varanasi was being seriously discussed—not least in mainstream publications and news channels. Likewise, AAP’s own propaganda of a resounding sweep in Punjab in last month’s Assembly election found an echo among Delhi’s editorial classes. Therefore, not surprisingly, the Rajouri Gardens debacle has prompted facile speculation of an imminent AAP collapse in Delhi and the return of the familiar pattern of two-party politics in Delhi.

The tendency to write an obituary of a party or a movement on the strength of one significant setback should be resisted. The AAP’s growth story between its inception in 2013 and its landslide victory in the Delhi Assembly election poll of 2015 is quite dramatic. Building on the euphoria and the anti-corruption mood of the Anna Hazare movement, AAP entered the Delhi political arena with a clutch of dedicated activists who, in turn, were able to draw other activists from NGOs and those on the margins of existing parties. Its electoral success in 2013 and 2015 owed entirely to an exasperation with corruption and the excitement brought about by Arvind Kejriwal’s reckless audacity. For a young party, AAP was remarkably successful in winning the allegiance of those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder and even a slice of the middle class.

I believe it is still premature to suggest on the strength of the Rajouri Gardens by-poll that AAP has lost its core support. There is still anecdotal evidence to indicate that AAP support in the slum clusters is intact, although the Congress has been able to claw some of its old supporters back. However, there is no doubt that AAP appears to have lost the support of that section of the middle classes that provided crucial incremental support and, more important, given the party a larger respectability in the media.

Kejriwal is the unquestioned leader of AAP. His leadership—as inevitably happens to those coming from the fractious culture of NGOs—is self-centred. Kejriwal operates best with a coterie. He is incapable of either delegating or building an institution. More important, he seems to be a man in a tearing hurry. While his national leadership ambitions drive him, it also makes him impatient of lesser responsibilities. The waning popularity of AAP in Delhi owes considerably to the leadership’s complete disdain for issues centred on governance. It is striking that in the past two years the Delhi Government has proved incapable of taking advantage of the Centre’s thrust on public expenditure in infrastructure. In focussing almost entirely on waging war on Narendra Modi, Kejriwal has taken his eye off the more humdrum, but nevertheless crucial, aspects of public administration. He, like many others before him, has so far failed to make the all-important transition from agitational politics to governance. It was this failure that created the space for both the Congress and the BJP to recover lost ground.

Many of the shortcomings of AAP also stem from an inclination to take risky short-cuts. In Delhi, the AAP government has earned itself discredit for acts of cronyism and its inability to distinguish between public funds and private donations. The casual approach to how private donations are spent in NGOs has also been a feature of the AAP Government’s attitude to taxpayers’ money and has landed the government in a mess. Likewise, in Punjab, being desperate to win at all costs, AAP flirted recklessly with the Sikh extremist fringe and triggered a backlash that turned its dreams into a nightmare.

It is entirely possible that the AAP leadership will learn the appropriate lessons from the byelection and recover lost ground. However, since the party is so entirely dependent on the leadership of Kejriwal and his personal inclinations, a call for the remaking of AAP is likely to become an experiment in persuading the leader to reshape his personality. That, alas, is likely to be more difficult than getting the party’s political orientation and priorities right.

The AAP has captured a slice of the Left-ofcentre mind space in Delhi—something that the Communists failed in all these decades. However, the movement from the fringes to the centre ground has proved more daunting. The municipal elections later this month will demonstrate whether AAP was entirely a fluke phenomenon or is more enduring. At least one by-election debacle has brought it and its enthusiastic volunteers back to reality.