Arvind Kejriwal: The end of the anti-hero

Politics is not a zero-sum game or a perfect mathematical equation where each participant's gain or loss is exactly balanced by the loss or gain of the other participant. That would explain why perhaps BJP’s clean sweep in the Delhi civic election is not so much a referendum on its below par ten-year rule in the corporation but more about the electorate's disillusionment with a man who had painstakingly created a demeanour of an anti-hero.

But if Arvind Kejriwal has faltered to deceive, having once captured the imagination of the middle class, it also has to do with the persona of Prime Minister Narendra Modi which is influencing rational political choices even in a civic election. But more of that later.

As a seemingly political non-conformist, Kejriwal, in his early days, had frowned at all emblems of power and pelf: at big intimidating SUVs — he preferred the humble Wagon R; at big bungalows in Lutyen's Delhi — his innate preference was for DDA flats; at gun-totting men in uniform: he found them an impediment in the discharge of his duties as a public servant. The inverted snobbery stretched from cocking a snook at the trappings of power to mocking the entire political class. Even the muffler, the incessant coughing, was all part of role play that endeared him to the disenchanted masses. Remember, how the mothballed look gave him a squishy crestfallen appearance, as if he was the most honest soul on this side of planet earth – the kind of politician on whose shoulder you would love to sob and download your cache of woes?

But soon the inconsistencies began to show: he accepted DDA flats, two adjacent ones, each with 8 rooms; he also 'grudgingly' accepted the security paraphernalia when he was mobbed in his own ‘Janata Durbars’; suddenly, he was no longer clamouring for the dismantling of the self-serving political system. Rather, he allowed the system to co-opt him without a murmur. With that, the role play became subdued: now he took affront if he was dubbed an anarchist; earlier, he would gloat in it; earlier, he was against all big interest groups, now he was only against crony capitalism; no longer was Kejriwal claiming that their party was contesting on the basis of small online donations. The script was changing and so was the nature of the political discourse.

Now, he was at pains to point out that he was wiser and will not lose nerve and relinquish power as he had done after a 54-day stint as AAP’s debutant chief minister. Politics is not about renunciation, it is about staying afloat, he insisted.

But somewhere Kejriwal lost sight of himself and forgot the difference between a pressure group, a political party and the government: a pressure group thrives on pinpricks, in Opposition, a political party can afford to stay perpetually in agitation mode but a ruling party must govern.

In no time, Kejriwal was seen to be perched on not two but three or four stools. But sometimes when you profess to despise everything others stand for, you stretch the limits of your own inverted snobbery. Then your contempt for status quo seems as ludicrous as the political snobbery of the other kind. When that happens, the magic begins to wane, the spell begins to break.

Then, you don't have to be in the ring seat to understand that Kejriwal had jeered at the frills of office only because he wanted to be perceived as a non-conformist; he had mocked at moneybags just because he does not have any knocking at his doorstep. As the slip began to show he covered them with aggression, misrepresentations, halftruths and lies; sure, the BJP’s tirade contributed immensely to the AAP's discomfort but by now the theatre of absurd had gained a momentum of its own.

Somewhere the underpinnings of this MCD election have to do with the fact that we do not appreciate the importance of civic polls, and are hitching our choices to those on the national canvas. Somewhere it also has to do with our innate failure to sift hype from promise and measure each party against its ability and capacity to deliver. All this, in turn, has to do with the one dimensional psychology of our voter; it is a replay of what usually happened when Mrs Indira Gandhi was at the helm.

Ingrained in our psyche is the eternal appeal for a strong centralised authority and it is no wonder Modi continues to hold even a civic voter in his thrall.

This is a political infirmity which the system will be afflicted with for some time. But the BJP's time will come, too, and if they fail to deliver then the same political idiom that has given the party such a rich harvest will suddenly sound hollow. There is a lesson in all this for the party: it must keep in mind that AAP's ineptitude gave them a certain political legitimacy, which enabled them to gloss over a decade of mediocre rule in the civic corporation. The fact that the Congress had rendered itself redundant and vacated its political space as both a ruling and opposition party only enhanced the tenacious hold of a centralised authority. No wonder one newspaper ran the headline: ‘Modi wins the MCD polls’.

INGRAINED in our psyche is the eternal appeal for a strong centralised authority and it is no wonder Modi continues to hold even a civic voter in his thrall.