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Pros and cons of AAP's rise
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By Amulya GanguliThe first fallout of the Aam Admi Party's (AAP) spectacular victory in
Delhi will be a renewed focus on sleaze in public life. This was the
issue which was the mainstay of Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement
of which the present-day AAP was a part and which built up Arvind
Kejriwal’s reputation as a crusader against bribery and underhand deals.
Since
this image is behind his political success, he is bound to buttress it
by carrying on the campaign. The Delhi chief minister must be aware that
his successes in the winter of 2013-14 and again this year have been
the result of the belief among the aam admi (common people) that only he
in the political establishment has the courage of conviction to nail
the guilty.
Moreover, this belief is based on the real-life
experience of ordinary people of the decline in petty acts of corruption
like the police collecting 'haftas' (bribes) from hawkers, traders and
others in Delhi when Kejriwal was the the chief minister for 49 days.
His castigation of the corporate bigwigs with a touch of insolence also
impressed the people as it showed that the AAP is not dependent on
covert funding by businessmen.
Not surprisingly, these positives
have a negative side as well because the AAP’s intention of turning the
existing system on its head, e.g. on the funding of parties, is fraught
with the possibility of economic and political turmoil. There have been
others, too, before him like the Mr Clean of Indian politics in the late
1980s, V.P. Singh, who advised the electorate not to vote for those of
his party whose reputation was tainted.
The shortness of the Raja
of Manda’s tenure as prime minister is a reminder and a warning to
Kejriwal that he cannot be in too much of a hurry to mould the system to
his own liking. A note of caution is all the more necessary because of
his instinctive rebelliousness.
That he is not willing to let
sleeping dogs lie is evident again from his raising the demand for full
statehood for Delhi. It is also obvious that once he becomes the chief
minister, he is going to return to his earlier theme of providing free
water up to 20,000 litres and lowering the power tariff.
There
is little doubt that all of this will earn him plaudits from what has
come to be known as the underclass. But whether such populism is
economically viable is something which the AAP has to figure out.
It
may be necessary to recall the fate of the Congress in the wake of its
indulgence in reckless populism - subsidized food, virtual doles for
rural labourers who built nothing substantial, no examinations for
students till Class VIII which has led to a precipitous drop in learning
standards.
What that experiment showed was that the people were
not interested in freebies so much as in a thriving economy which
provided jobs. Considering that capitalism has won the battle against
socialism with the buoyant private sector becoming the engine of growth
at the expense of the moribund public sector, Kejriwal will be making a
mistake if he targets the business community in matters of, say,
electricity charges.
His pugnacity in this respect was evident
not only from the cutting of power lines when he was still an agitator
and a decision to cut the rates when in office without waiting for the
audit of the power companies which he had ordered.
Outside the
matter of user charges, the AAP’s impatience was seen from the
directives given to the police by one of its ministers to act against
the suspected immoral activities in an area with a sizeable population
of Africans, which scared the latter and upset the ambassadors of these
countries.
To avoid such pitfalls, the new ruling party’s first
objective will have to be to ascertain what can be achieved without
overturning the apple cart. It need not be afraid that its decision to
hasten slowly will be interpreted as temporizing. The average voter is
perceptive enough to understand the AAP’s circumspection.
It is
also possible that once the AAP demonstrates that it intends to reform
the system and; not uproot it, other parties will join it in its
efforts, even if reluctantly. The business class may also respond by
being more transparent and less profit-minded. It will be aided in this
exercise by the fact that the corporate houses will not have to make
under-the-table payments to politicians - at least not as much as
before.
From this aspect of cooperation with others in the
political field, the AAP has a great opportunity to translate into
reality the dream of reformers of transforming the system. The party’s
asset of huge popularity cannot but compel the other parties and the
corporate sector to accede to its game plan. One can only hope that the
AAP will not throw it all away by its intemperance and
self-righteousness.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at [email protected])