7/20/2017 The AAP Dilemma

The AAP Dilemma

SHRINIVAS DHARMADHIKARI
Sunday, July 02,2017

Media wild re post Kapil Mishra episode seems to have subsided.

Besides, Aam Adami Party appears to have got a brief, unexpected
reprieve from the incessant hounding by the punitive arms of the BJP
Government at the center. This is the time, Arvind Kejriwal and his
team must use to reect on the whirlwind developments and series of
setbacks it received during last few months.

Speaking about setbacks, it is true that the party has not come out as
heroes on horseback during the last three elections of Punjab, Goa and
Delhi Municipal Corporation(DMC). But contrary to gleeful media
prognosis of march to historys dustbin, AAP has acquired rm footing
as the centrist party in power in Delhi and leading the opposition in
Punjab & DMC.

Hence, howsoever the combined opposition assembled to decide on

the Presidential candidate may like to wish it away, AAP has pushed its
way into the coveted club of the mostly aging political class currently
leading the electorate, two third of which is less than half their age. It is
time now the party leadership tries to consolidate gains rather than
launching some Faustian quickies, hoping that they will bring within
reach the dazzling Delhi performance magnitude of which was partly
on account of conditions more akin to Delhi then but in the process, it
skewed partys self-image as the giant killer for all seasons.

As a sympathetic political observer, I take the liberty of hindsight,

privilege of moral high ground and oer some ideas with rash & relish

The Duverger's law of political science states that in the present

winner takes all system emergence and hegemony of a Two-Party
System has been a universal experience. This is inimical to the large
and diverse democratic set up that we have in India. But the other
option of proportional representation has its downside in semi-literate
and politically yet to mature Indian electorate. Consequently, in each
post-Ayodhya Loksabha elections, voters perceive their options
regarding a binary of Congress or BJP. It is true that the strident
ascendancy of BJP and the lackluster response of Congress may have
given erroneous impression that Congress is crumbling and on the way
to extinction. But it was more in the minds of political pundits and
some members of newly emerging political leadership. Hence, BJP and
PM Modi became the major target of competing for political interest,
and Congress enjoyed its absolution by default with quiet ecstasy and
exhilaration.

I am not sure how much this has damaged AAPs aspirations in Punjab
and Goa. Nonetheless, the hard fact driven home is that any viable
challenge to the binary option perceived by the electorate has to come
from a single party with solid performance and strong leadership, and
not a motley coalition.

And here lies the monumental potentiality created for itself by AAP if
not nationwide at least in North India. If AAP fritters away this
opportunity, the progressive and secular voter is unlikely to condone
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7/20/2017 The AAP Dilemma

Arvind Kejriwal ,despite his unusual but adorable style of publicly

accepting mistakes and seeking an apology and a second chance. I
am sorry, but Arvind cant say and be done with;Hum to Rajniti me
naye hai ji.

Then how does AAP thrusts itself into the electoral binary at the
national level? Thanks to the daily vendetta politics perpetuated by
BJP since it came to power at the center, AAP has to only contend with
Congress in this task.

A senior and politically astute member of AAP Maharashtra who had

spent a long time in Goa during the assembly election once mentioned
to me in private conversations, You see, as a competing political
proposition we do not have a substantive dierentiator with respect to
the Congress. After all, Corruption is too narrow an issue. Besides in
many parts of India voters look upon it as a transaction cost with the
hope that with the rising tide, all boats will rise.

This is where the role of comprehensive party ideology becomes

critical. AAPs electoral prominence and its public acceptance has
been on the basis of one or two issues. In Delhi, during the election, it
was broadly corruption that resulted in high electricity tari and
availability of water. In Punjab, it was drugs and deterioration. In Goa,
the pitch was clean: Good Governance. However, now that AAP is on
the threshold of becoming a national party, it will have to address many
larger issues and develop a comprehensive alternate World View which
will be its key dierentiator with respect to Congress.

Jairam Ramesh of the Congress party in his book, To the Brink and
Back: Indias 1991 Story has described in detail how in 1991, our
foreign exchange cover had dwindled to mere 15 days prompting a
rush for joint BJP and Congress consultation. And instead of going to
public and seeking a specic mandate for the decision of historic
proportion, both parties sold Indias economic sovereignty for a song
resulting in todays neo liberal economic morass for which both BJP
and Congress are jointly and severally responsible. Here lies the clue
for a comprehensive dierentiator that if communicated well, can
provide voters a reason to vote for AAP.

Further such a comprehensive ideology document will not only provide

a binding glue for the party cadre which has joined the party at
dierent times and for dierent ideological reasons. After all, as one
Spanish proverb puts it; More grows in the garden than the gardener
knows he has planted.

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