The stunning victory of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on February 10 in Delhi coincided with the global liberal order in disarray.
Far
left Syriza had come to power in Greece. Southern Europe was likewise
threatened. Gone was the Berlusconi tamasha in Italy. The Nordic North
was taking to racism like duck to water. Britain and France, liberal
citadels, were besieged and may fall. Western economies are in such
disrepair that Chinese slowdown is, to the protagonists, heartening
speculation.
The electorate in Delhi administered such a double
fisted punch on the established order as to leave it dazed. Never in the
history of free and fair elections had a party won more than 90 per
cent of the seats - 67 seats in a house of 70. This in the metropolis of
Delhi, the capital of India. That too, at a moment when India was being
enlisted in the global grand design against the rise of China. This
market of 1.25 billion must be insulated from turbulence. At such a
moment, AAP has come riding a bolt from the blue. Ideas have legs and
for this reason this idea, tried out in Delhi with brilliant success,
had to be killed.
Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav and Anand
Kumar are without doubt the finest men in AAP but they have not set the
popular imagination on fire. Arvind Kejriwal has.
Nothing quite
as magical has happened in Indian public life. As a communicator he has
no parallel. I have not seen him strike one false note in the hundreds
of interviews, and off-the-cuff comments in the course of a campaign
which was a seamless media show.
Narendra Modi in his historic
victory of May 2014 had come to power riding the world’s most expensive
media campaign. He gained a thousand fold from the listlessness of the
Congress. Modi harvested the unspeakable disgust with Sonia, Rahul and
Manmohan Singh.
The timing of Kejriwal’s victory placed a huge
question mark on Modi’s performance. AAP exposed the potential for early
disenchantment with Modi.
AAP was not just a local aberration, it
was a threat to patterns of crony capitalism. India Inc had bought up
the media, lock, stock and barrel. Any journalist pitting himself as a
conscientious objector to AAP should unburden himself of the grand
delusion that he is driven by his inner voice. He is owned by interests
who, in a manner of speaking, own Modi too.
That is why it is sad
that Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav and now even Anand Kumar have
allowed themselves to be used by that instrument of the establishment
called the media. Photographs of these gents have adorned the front
pages of the nation’s newspapers for the past month. These have been
accompanied by news of rebellion within AAP.
The issues hinge on
the personality of Kejriwal which appears to have bruised the egos of
his think tank. How the party should structure itself? What position
would Bhushan and Yadav have in it?
There has been an incipient
tussle between Left inclined welfarism favoured by Kejriwal and Lohia
socialism. Free thinking is in the DNA of Lohiaites, which is what
Yogendra Yadav and Anand Kumar primarily are. It would always have been
problematic to fit them into hierarchies as also to ignore their ideas.
What
is astonishing is that instead of sorting out issues within the party
forum, the dissidents have possibly unwittingly played into the hands of
the establishment. Even if there were serious charges against Kejriwal,
could the dissidents not have raised them in good time, once the AAP
government had found its feet?
In this instance, too much success
appears to have been the party’s bane. Remember when the Modi campaign
was in full swing, important BJP leaders were whispering their own
assessments of the electoral outcome. They were called the 160 club. The
implication was that Modi with a small margin would need the club to
form the government.
Likewise, a relatively modest victory for
AAP would have been more to the liking of those who now find Kejriwal
unmanageable in his exceptional success.
If possible, Kejriwal
must walk the extra mile to retain old comrades. His other cadres are
very raw and untrained. Alternatively he will have to dedicate himself
unwaveringly to good governance which was his original theme song.
In
Prashant Bhushan, the dissidents do have in their ranks, the high
minded Brutus. What Kejriwal requires is a Mark Antony who will turn the
argument around.
(27.03.2015 Saeed Naqvi is a commentator on
political and diplomatic affairs. The views expressed are personal. He
can be reached on [email protected])
