Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, in a tweet, announced on Tuesday, 26 February, that he would postpone his indefinite fast for Delhi’s statehood, in light of the India-Pakistan situation.
Predictably, rivals are viewing Kejriwal’s indefinite “upwas” plan as a political stunt, with an eye on the upcoming parliamentary elections. The timing does not rule this out, but Kejriwal’s latest protest has a qualitatively different backdrop from his earlier ones. It is the first since the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) buckled down to its governance responsibilities.
The AAP once looked like a party of protests, eager to stage an agitation at the drop of a hat. It is now raising a curated issue that it believes is salient to Delhi’s future, one that it believes constrains elected governments in Delhi from delivering more. Simply put, there is more method than madness on display this time, and the latest battle is a carefully picked one.
Kejriwal No Longer On High Horse
This is consistent with how the AAP has tried changing itself over time. The party began as a combative, loose unit, aggressively – and if rivals were to be believed, irresponsibly targeting the entire polity, but has sobered since.
It was, one is inclined to think, the 2017 reversals in the Punjab assembly and Delhi municipal elections that drove the AAP to introspection – and the realisation that its politics had begun acquiring a tiresomely theatrical dimension, and that it needed to seriously apply itself to governance tasks if it was to fulfill the hopes of voters and cadres who had invested in its promise. Kejriwal himself is no longer on a high horse, chastened perhaps by the exits of credible individuals like Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav.
AAP’s Good Governance
The AAP’s focus on governance has worked. State finances are in good health despite increased water and electricity subsidies, Delhi’s economic momentum is intact, and government schools, a key priority area for the AAP, outperformed private schools in the 2018 CBSE Class XII exams.
There may be quibbles about data, but the larger signal the party has managed to send out is clear: that it is a rare Indian political party imaginatively applying itself to citizen’s concerns, channeling its original promise of radical transformation into concrete, actionable points.
Whether it is the introduction of the odd-even scheme for combating vehicular pollution, providing ‘home delivery’ of a number of government services or crowd-funding its electoral campaigns, the AAP has demonstrated an inclination to creatively engage with issues and craft out-of-the-box responses.
2019 Lok Sabha Elections May Have Come Too Soon for AAP
In contrast, efforts in other states, while not necessarily un-substantive always, come across as incremental and driven by political one-upmanship. And when their efforts sound ambitious, they smack of smart packaging. Sure, Delhi is a small, more wieldy state, and that does make it relatively easier terrain for certain kinds of initiatives, but the AAP surely cannot be faulted for working with what it has.
That the AAP is doing all this despite an institutional allocation of power that hardly works in favour of Delhi’s elected governments, is all the more impressive.
Notably, Delhi’s statehood, crucial to balancing the power equations in the state and calibrating the role of Lieutenant Governors (LGs), is not an issue that the AAP is alone in advocating. Both the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress have made the case for Delhi’s statehood in the past.
The 2019 parliamentary elections have come too soon in the AAP’s journey and it is unlikely that it will make a substantial impact in them.
However, there are interesting prospects for the party going forward, if it continues in similar vein. For starters, there is the performance while in government in Delhi, which can be pitched as an example of what the party can achieve when voted to power.
Corruption In AAP Doesn’t Appear To Be Systemic
Secondly, Kejriwal has managed to create a pan-India ‘brand’ of himself and his party, as a leader and unit not vulnerable to corruption and possessing the spine to take a stand on issues. As a result, the AAP punches much over the weight of its parliamentary and assembly seats in terms of popular mind space it occupies.
To be accurate, there have been corruption allegations against AAP ministers and office-bearers, but these have not stuck fast enough to suggest that corruption in the party is systemic (like in many others). This can only be a plus.
Whether it is Kejriwal going to Puducherry in solidarity with another chief minister battling an over-reaching LG or standing with the opposition against the BJP’s failures, the AAP has not hesitated in taking a position, even if they leave it vulnerable to charges of political opportunism from some quarters. That the AAP does this from a presently politically unthreatening position makes it easier for other to reciprocate its overtures. In the process, there are potentially useful, long-term friends being earned.
AAP Has Little Baggage to Carry But Has Much Work To Do
Thirdly, the AAP has the advantage of little baggage. Which means it can question rivals without being accused back of the same sins it is highlighting. For instance, it can interrogate the BJP on its economic management failures or the Congress for its soft-Hindutva line without being charged for either itself. This, again, is no small advantage going forward and affords an opportunity to present an un-hackneyed narrative.
With the two national parties looking in no hurry to set aside their hostilities and in danger of losing sight of the big picture amidst blame games, the electorate sooner or later should be welcoming of it.
That said, work remains to be done if the AAP has to emerge as a serious player on the national stage. It is important to demonstrate that it can: (a) win and deliver in a context more testing and ‘India-representative’ (more rural, less dense) than Delhi; and, (b) retain its fire, spine and relatively honest character as it expands its footprint, organically or via alliances and, who knows, mergers.
Also, old, bad habits have a way of re-surfacing and the party needs to be cautious of lapsing back to its theatrical phase, especially since there may be temptations to combat the BJP’s headline-hunting ways with some headline-grabbing of its own.
None of this is going to be easy, as the AAP’s own travails in Punjab suggest. Winning state elections is tough especially for an under-resourced party and the temptations that come with power can be difficult to ignore and regulate. That it has achieved these in Delhi and has certain advantages going forward, should be encouraging news for the party though.
(Manish Dubey is a policy analyst and crime fiction writer, and can be reached on Twitter at@ManishDubey1972. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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