Lesson for AAP and Arvind Kejriwal: You Can’t Be a Full-Time Political Party With a Freelance Ideology
The results of 2025 Delhi Assembly elections took the centre stage on 8 February. In this piece for The Indian Express, columnist Aakash Joshi questions the political positioning of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which finds itself in an "analogous predicament."
Joshi notes how AAP started with focus on schools and 'mohalla clinics' which were only partially implemented. He writes, "A party that has been ambivalent on ideological and moral issues is more vulnerable on this front."
A question that has been asked of AAP for some years now is this: What does the party stand for? Is a reduced electricity bill enough of an ideology? It’s refusal to stand up for minority rights and confront the broader parochialism that the BJP champions will become all the more stark with the loss in Delhi. Kejriwal’s refusal to visit riot-affected North-East Delhi in 2020, the demonising of Rohingya refugees, being largely silent about “bulldozer raj”, sending pilgrims to Ayodhya to coincide with the anniversary of the Babri Masjid demolition anniversary, and even Chief Minister Atishi playing Bharat by keeping the CM’s chair vacant for “Ram” Kejriwal — the list of the AAP’s attempts to be “BJP lite” are numerous. In this, the party has learnt no lessons from the Congress’s intermittent — and almost always failed — attempts at “soft Hindutva."Aakash Joshi, The Indian Express
Voice in the Wilderness
In his weekly column for The Indian Express, Congress leader P Chidambaram states that there has never been a more politically-driven budget, referring to the one released by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman last week. He focuses on how the budget failed to seize the opportunity to reform, restructure the economy and instead, only schemes and Missions were launched.
V Anantha Nageswaran, the Chief Economic Adviser is the 'voice in the wilderness' who gave sensible advise through the Economic Survey (ES) 2024-25. Chidambaram briefly points out four out of the 13 chapters in ES to argue that the focus should be on de-regulation and business reforms.
Look at the situation in 2024: The BJP had been voted to power for the third time but with a warning. You will have sufficient numbers but not an absolute majority to form the government. You will not attempt to change the Constitution. You will govern by consensus. You will address the issues of unemployment, poverty and inequality, inflation, farmers’ distress, and absent or broken infrastructure. It was the same situation that Narasimha Rao-Manmohan Singh faced in 1991.P Chidambaram, The Indian Express
As Kejriwal’s ‘Delhi Model’ Loses AAPeal, Two Key Questions for National Politics
What are the implications of this Delhi election in the wider configuration of party politics in India?
Asim Ali, a political researcher answers this in his column for The Times of India. Talking about the rise of AAP, he stated that it is a party which practices 'post-cleavage' politics, meaning that it takes no clear stands on distributive conflicts among different classes, communities and interests, but speaks of a 'universalistic' and 'pragmatic' politics.
Additionally, he addresses important questions such as: Can parties like AAP regain their space or are they staring at an inevitable decline? And can Congress now regain its former space, now vacated by these 'centrist' regional parties?
In the BJP-dominant phase since 2014, the survival of both AAP and BJD depended on wooing back a floating bloc of voters, who switched back to them in the state elections after voting for BJP in the national elections. The balancing act required a distinctive state model built on the free provision of public goods and services, and a charismatic face at the state level (Naveen Patnaik, Arvind Kejriwal and YS Jagan Reddy). The post-cleavage model of politics has now reached a point of exhaustion, with BJD and YSRCP losing office last year and AAP in this election.Asim Ali, The Times of India
In Delhi, This Was No Election, but a Referendum on Kejriwal
In her weekly column for The Indian Express, Tavleen Singh argues that the Delhi election was more of a referendum on Arvind Kejriwal than an election. Writing about Kejriwal's political trajectory, she says that even though he started as a leader who promised Delhi things they had longed for, ambition and narcissism took the best of him as he tried to refashion his image as a national leader.
She also talks about the lack of cleanliness and civic amenities in Delhi, squalid bazaars, filthy streets and new samples of private investment like hotels and office blocks now ubiquitous in the city.
These are things you see in every Indian city, as I am often reminded by readers of this column. But it is only in Delhi that we had a man who portrayed himself as a leader so different that he brought with him the promise of an India in which the poorest and most humble of our citizens could hope that their voices would also be heard. When that leader built himself a magnificent new residence fitted with all the things that ordinary Indians cannot dream of in the one-room tenements that is the average Indian home, all hope was lost.Tavleen Singh, The Indian Express
What Explains the Big BJP Win in the Capital
In his column for the Hindustan Times, Neelanjan Sircar observes that the wave that AAP's Arvind Kejriwal rode on in 2013 — a wave of middle-class and upper-class discontent — is also the primary reason for his party's defeat as these voters have deserted him.
"The growing disenchantment of the middle and upper classes with the AAP was enough to wrest control of Delhi," he writes.
Like many elections that we have seen since the 2024 general election, this victory for the BJP had less to do with Prime Minister Modi. A common thread between the BJP’s surprising victories in Haryana, Maharashtra, and now Delhi, is that a chief minister candidate was either not named or the issue was deemed irrelevant to the party’s political appeal. These elections have been won on sheer organisational capacity and efficiency — the fact that the party makes fewer mistakes while picking candidates, in mobilising voters, and in preventing the fracturing of its core vote. But this is also a very different kind of politics for the BJP. Paradoxically, winning states in this manner does not dramatically increase the political appeal of PM Modi.Neelanjan Sircar, Hindustan Times
Despite Spending Hike on Defence, Many Challenges Yet To Be Tackled
Kamal Davar, a retired Lieutenant-general, the first head of India's Defence Intelligence Agency, writes in the Deccan Chronicle about the need for adequate allocations in the country's defence budget to attain the desired military capabilities.
Additionally, he also points out the many critical gaps in our arsenal and how this operational void needs to be filled with the alacrity it deserves.
For decades, India has been among the top arms-importing nations. Most of our defence public sector units, set up since the early 1950s, have underperformed. The government has done well by emphasising on the self-reliance for all defence needs of the nation and its 'Atma Nirbharta' programme should be given full support for successful implementation. The decision to spend 75 percent of its budgetary allocations for purchases from domestic manufacturers is indeed a bold one. The Centre must also ensure genuine assistance to India's vibrant and technologically advanced private sector.Kamal Davar, Deccan Chronicle
India’s Voice Must Resonate in Global AI Conversations
Congress MP and author Shashi Tharoor, in this piece for The Hindu, makes a case for India's engagement with Artificial Intelligence (AI) especially at an international level. He argues that India, being one of the fastest adopters of AI stands at the forefront of "leveraging AI for transformative change across sectors such as health care, finance, agriculture and logistics."
He states that India needs to join the discourse on international AI safety standards as by engaging proactively, India can also position itself as a global leader in AI governance and foster cross-border innovation.
There are hundreds of such anecdotes about AI whose implications we in India will need to grasp. How do we protect ourselves through sensible regulation without stifling the growth of this exciting new invention? AI is reshaping industries, economies, and geopolitics, transcending national borders with data, algorithms, and innovations flowing seamlessly across regions. In this interconnected landscape, effective governance and safety mechanisms require a unified international approach. For India, participating in global standard-setting on AI safety is not just an opportunity but an imperative. But, India has not even established a national AI safety institute.Shashi Tharoor, The Hindu
The Revolution Will Not Be Subsidised
In his piece for the Hindustan Times, Roshan Kishore points out the ideological disenchantment of the voters with AAP which was aggravated by condition of Delhi's infrastructure.
He also observes, "AAP's rise in Delhi politics has been marked by welfare schemes, but its lack of ideological challenge to BJP may cost it support amid shifting voter bases."
To be sure, one should be careful when writing obituaries for the AAP today. It still has a 40% plus vote share. But one also needs to ask a question at the same time. If the BJP really goes on to fulfil its promise of matching all the AAP’s existing and promised welfare programmes in Delhi, are people, including those who have voted for the AAP, really going to miss it? Would things have been different had the AAP tried to build an ideological challenge against the BJP rather than putting all its eggs in the welfare basket? To say this is not to belittle the importance of welfare in Indian politics, but it also means that welfare alone cannot be the driving force behind the broader ideological battle between the Hindu Right and the secular challenge to it.Roshan Kishore, Hindustan Times
Trump Plays Madman. Will the Threats Work?
In this column for the Deccan Herald, Mohamed Zeeshan writes about how US President Donald Trump is following Nixon's footsteps to emulate the Madman Theory.
He writes about how in the first week of his office, he threatened Colombia, Canada and Mexico with heavy tariffs and has been going all-out extreme.
That is bad news for the rest of the world. Trump has now been encouraged by the effectiveness of the Madman Theory and might be tempted to use it on wilder ideas. This week, Trump said that he wants to take over Gaza and relocate its people to Egypt, Jordan and other countries in the region. Almost everyone in every country derided that proposal. Egypt and Jordan flat out refused any possibility of taking people in. Trump is now highly liable to threaten both with heavy tariffs. The problem with the Madman Theory, however, is that the threats have to be credible, and the more frequently Trump uses wild threats, the less effective they will become.Mohamed Zeeshan, Deccan Herald
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