They say that things are rarely as bad as they seem at first. Yet it’d be incredibly difficult to be Arvind Kejriwal at the moment. The story of his rise is deeply inspiring for even the most cynical.
- The Income Tax Officer who kicked away his gilded job;
- The Social Worker who slogged for a decade in the slums of Delhi;
- The Magsaysay Award Winner who fought the good fight with Anna - and the pragmatist who melted the revolution to cast historic electoral mandates.
- Once he won the mandate, he became the reformer who forged a new generation of post-caste, post-hate, post-fake politics in the country.
- He became the CM who would transform basic health, education, and power situation in Delhi when the country had all but given up on these.
- Through all this, he would bring fundamental human dignity to the invisible underbelly of Delhi’s population under his watch.
- He would set new standards in executional excellence, that had been a bane of governance since independence.
The story of his humbling is no less spectacular.
- The Chief Minister of a state, who saw the union chip away alarmingly his already limited powers;
- The fearless aspiration that ate more than it could chew;
- The David who took on the Goliath without knowing how unfair this fight was going to be.
- The politician who underestimated the overwhelming power and naked impunity that would be brought to bear against him – to block and stall, to shackle & bog, to taint & smear, to mock and lampoon, to cheat and manipulate.
- In the end, he was forced to fight a losing battle – the battle of power, narrative, and popular imagination.
How did this come to be and now that the results are out, what are the key factors behind AAP’s loss of power in Delhi? It’s a question that’s not just important for Delhi, but also for India’s future.
AAP’s 14% vote share in Gujarat – the ultimate Hindutva laboratory - was a massive wake-up call for the Sangh Parivar. The brand of not just PM Modi but even his successor-in-waiting, was inextricably linked to a shining Gujarat model and continued dominance on this home turf. The highly disciplined and ideological machinery decided to come down with all its might to try to obliterate this disruptive new phenomenon that they had struggled to comprehend, emulate, or handle (unlike Congress, that they had figured to the bones, having become an Indira-day version of it themselves in many ways). So the ‘gherabandi’ began about two and a half years back to keep this tiny party dancing to its myriad shenanigans.
A. KEEP THROWING MUCK, SOMETHING WILL STICK:
- The excise case was chanced upon, and arrests began by agencies operating as caged parrots (Supreme Court's words in the context).
- Laws designed to stem terrorist funding were used to keep all the top leaders in jail under the pretext of spurious investigations, creating an unprecedented situation against a democratically elected government.
- The party that had been built on the anti-corruption plank would be damaged with exactly the allegation of corruption.
- The CM house matter (the so-called Sheeshmahal issue) had already gained good traction.
- The excise assault began to seed doubts, especially in middle-class supporters' heads, relentlessly reinforced via WhatsApp brainwash machines. Haryana elections became the first electoral casualty of this.
B. BLOCK WORK AND BLAME AAP:
- A second pillar of attack was strengthened by passing a series of acts in parliament that took away much of the elected state government's powers in an open mockery of democracy.
- This was used brutally to block and stall as many AAP schemes and their implementation as possible.
- It specifically hurt AAP in MCD, where key budgetary powers were taken away from AAP, creating major dysfunction.
- Ironically, exactly as BJP was carrying this blockade on governance, in meticulously synchronized moves, it took to the streets to protest a lack of work by the government, which truly hurt middle-class perceptions.
C. DYSFUNCTION IN THE INDIA ALLIANCE:
- The inherent contradictions inside the INDIA alliance are that most of its constituents have reasons to feel threatened if Congress gets stronger in their respective states, as they mostly came to be at the cost of Congress.
- Congress aggression, even if ineffective in winning seats, cut directly into AAP’s vote share, and in at least 14 constituencies, BJP’s margin of victory was lower than Congress’ vote share, serving BJP's schemes.
E. PLAYING THE BJP GAME:
- With its back against the wall, AAP’s entire campaign focus this time remained largely on the lower classes.
- BJP felt secure about the identity-aware, hate-washed middle class by blocking work in MCD and using arrests in the liquor case to trigger doubts on AAP leaders’ foundational credentials on corruption.
- This was further locked in by major budget reliefs on income tax, allowing BJP the luxury to focus on chipping away at AAP's lower-class base.
F. MACHINE, METHOD, AND MANIPULATION:
- Delhi election was not Modi vs. Kejriwal. It was mostly BJP vs. Kejriwal, with Modi taking a relative back seat.
- BJP's victory can be seen as the victory of the machine over the man with its unbounded Methods, Maths, Manipulations, and Media firepower.
- Examples include the manipulation of electoral rolls, which saw significant voter additions in pro-BJP areas and deletions in pro-AAP areas.
Against this brutal take-no-prisoners onslaught, the AAP machine tried to put up a valiant, if ill-matched, fight. This unexpected setback also serves as a useful opportunity to entrench deeper its true north of sewa, saadgee, and samvad, and to reinvigorate the party's image, organization, and motivation.
BJP by winning Delhi hopes to have solved its AAP problem in Gujarat, put another dent into the INDIA alliance, and gain breakthroughs in Punjab.
As the piece began, things are rarely as bad as they seem at first. The difference in vote share between BJP and AAP is merely 2% - in any other state, 44% would be enough to form a government.
AAP must rethink, reboot, and gear up to be an opposition as formidable as it was a government in its first term. Losing power is an essential rite of passage to maturity for political parties.
The idea behind AAP remains pivotal to India’s future, and there's no party currently positioned to deliver this idea. As long as the idea is alive in public imagination, the party will have many more chances. The time is right to go back to its soul, entrench it further, and rebuild for the next phase of existence, focusing on the three mantras: Saadgi, Samvad, and Sewa.
- Prashant K. Umaputra
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