The stunning debut by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the recent Delhi elections has taken everyone by surprise. None of the exit polls predicted this, nor that the electorate would look at AAP as an alternative. AAP is a new experiment in the way it opened up space for honest candidates even if inexperienced in electoral politics. It inaugurated a bottom-up organisational structure, based on the principle of voluntary participation, and has maintained transparency in collecting funds. While these are laudable practices unheard of in the history of Indian electoral politics, are they sufficient markers for a political party to survive and play a long innings?
AAP’s rise can be attributed to the general discontent among the electorate, of being taken for granted, of voting along predisposed lines, of inherited political affiliations. However, the discontent is also due to the growing inequality, the lack of employment, everyday harassment by police and state officials and, of course, inflation. And corruption has emerged as symbolic of all these issues. Thus, in a discourse against corruption everyone can see what they wish to. It is precisely this reason that gave AAP its win in higher middle-class localities, such as South and New Delhi, and in the reserved constituencies as well. AAP could project these varied fragments of discontent into a cohesive political articulation of the people ( aam admi ) versus the State. It is along the lines in which civil society was constructed in Eastern Europe after the collapse of the old regime, where ‘people’ are civil society and ‘corrupt officials/politicians’ are the State. This discourse construes ‘the people’ as a single datum. The corrective mechanisms to address this discontent are seen as a new set of institutional mechanisms, including the Lok Pal Bill, the right to recall, NOTA, compulsory voting, limits on and transparency in corporate funding of political parties, among other issues. Here again, corruption becomes symbolic of the discontent, the changes becoming symbolic of a new system.
That’s the easy part. However, the real stuff of politics happens when parties begin to address schisms that exist in society, when they are called on to accommodate conflicting interests. Here, a mere discourse on corruption or a language of institutional change cannot hold conflicting demands together because these discourses are neither the source nor the solution to the nature of the problems faced by various social groups. How can this discourse pacify conflicting interests between the ‘people’ of Telangana and those of Seemandhra? Or between those who demand reservations and expansion of affirmative action policies and those who resist this as being counter-productive in building a globally competitive nation? Between those who are dispossessed by the new economic model and those who stand to gain with an exponential rise in incomes?
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As of now, AAP has no considered position on any of these issues. In fact, we might recollect that, during the campaign lead by Anna Hazare, Prashant Bhusan had taken a position in favour of the Right to Self-determination for the people of Kashmir and had spoken in favour of Gilani and Arundhati Roy, while Anna and the rest of his team were quick to distance themselves from such a position. It is in addressing issues of this kind that maintaining an easy consensus of the kind that can be generated around a moral issue such as corruption is extremely difficult. Once such differences come to the fore, the idealism against corruption will give way to locating differences among the ‘
In celebrating the resounding victory of AAP, we need to be cautious about this context, which gets reflected in the complex patterns that have emerged across the four states. We must note that people have voted in big numbers and have voted back to power two incumbent governments in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, in recognition of the welfare policies in both the states. Here it is continuity over dramatic change; it is measured voting over rampant discontent. At the same time, the electorate has rejected the government in Rajasthan, which was also inaugurating similar welfare schemes but might have failed in effective communication, always construed as arrogance. While in Delhi there was ‘good governance’, it did not translate into good politics. It could well have been a suspicion that giving a fourth term would make the government indifferent to the people, while it is always easy to draw concessions and welfare from a party that has stayed out of power for long. The reasons continue to be local and context specific and this is where the strength of Indian democracy remains. It is within this mosaic that one needs to locate and celebrate the success story of AAP.
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