K N Pandita
Commentators are counting the reasons for the defeat of the Aam Aadmi Party in the recently announced Delhi assembly elections. Reasons can be overt as well as covert. Some of the known ones could be the incumbency syndrome, the allegations of corruption and scams in the AAP, the inability to fulfil commitments made in the election manifesto, loss of checks and balances and internal bickering in the party among others.
An important factor contributing to BJP’s success was the meticulous planning by the BJP’s election team. BJP has earned more experience in fighting an election after it faced a debacle in the UP parliamentary elections. Yogi Adityanath had raised a very cogent slogan of “batoge to katoge.” BJP higher echelons not only understood the meaning of this alarm-raising axiom but also translated it into action. Unlike in the UP parliamentary elections, there was perfect coordination among the activists of the election monitoring team. The result was the thumping victory for BJP in the Delhi assembly elections after a gap of 27 years.
On the surface, it is the defeat of AAP and Congress. That is how an ordinary voter will interpret the result. But there is more than what meets the eye in the outcome.
The genesis of the sudden emergence of a new political party by the name of Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi way back in 2013, reveals some stark facts. The party calling itself the well-wisher of the deprived classes, neglected many segments including minorities, Dalits, daily wagers, farm labourers, and shanty-dwellers etc. It always maintained a distance from the CPI (M) despite professing to have a patently identical task plan. Secondly, its founder, Arvind Kejriwal, was alien to political activism even at the lowest rungs; he was a little-known person whose antecedents were obscure and nondescript.
He was first seen among the followers of Anna Hazare who, in the initial stages, announced that his mission was to fight corruption in the Indian polity. Many young people joined Anna Hazare’s mission and Arvind Kejriwal was one among them. In due course, he was able to garner support among many unsuspecting and sincerely nationalist youth.
On the premise that it would weed out corruption, a new party called AAP was formed in Delhi. A broom was accepted as party insignia – something meaningful – and Kejriwal went around clad in a pullover with a muffler wrapped around his head promising he would enjoy living an underdog’s life instead of accepting the privileged lifestyle of a chief minister. He would live in a modest house and use a small car. He voiced so many pious promises.
Delhi, as we know, became a home for millions of migrants following the partition of India in 1947. They had to restart their lives from scratch. Moreover, as conditions began to stabilize in the post-partition era, millions of people flocked from the neighbouring states of Rajasthan, MP, UP, and other places to the capital city in search of work and means of livelihood. Most of them are labourers and daily wagers. They raised innumerable shanties in and outside the peripheries of the city, where they live and eke out a miserable life.
Eventually this segment of downtrodden and deprived people numerically outstripped the middle and lower-middle class of Delhi. No doubt, successive governments of Delhi State did set forth the agenda of improving the lot of these marginalised people but what was being planned or done was dismally inadequate.
Kejriwal took a cue from this socioeconomic situation and devised a political rhetoric that succeeded in luring the deprived and have-nots of society to his party. Those who flocked to his camp were the sidelined minorities, Dalits, economically weaker sections, and lower rungs of society. In other words, they were the wood hewers and water drawers.
Kejriwal exploited their poverty and deprivation by promising free water, reduced power tariffs, proper shelter to shanty dwellers, financial support to destitute females and so many freebees. This allurement was the main reason for Kejriwal’s popularity among them.
When he tasted power, he came out in his true colours. His and his party’s misdoings are to be found in several reports of the CAG, and we need not go into those details. His arrogant and unrelenting attacks on the Prime Minister, raising accusations and even using derogatory language about him, all showed that he was running a secret agenda and imagining that he had become so popular as to proclaim that he would not allow Narendra Modi to win Delhi at least in his present life.
The ruling AAP gradually turned into a coterie of four or five ministers and their privies and with that began the general loot of the state exchequer. The established bureaucratic process was thwarted, cudgels taken up with the Union government and the Lieutenant Governor, and defiance of established rules and protocol became a routine.
Kejriwal’s undeclared visit to Dubai, his provocative statements with a communal tinge, his fraternizing with known anti-national elements among some minority groups were very unusual for any chief minister. His reluctance to provide facts before the court which was conducting enquiry into certain administrative malpractices made Kejriwal a dubious person.
Rumours are afloat that some foreign interests, deeply interested in destabilising India are creating moles within the Indian society to carry forward subversive activities. They spread false and baseless rumours to mislead people.
The defeat of the AAP hints at the crushing discomfiture of the alliance called INDI Alliance which has one and only one item manifesto and that is to remove Modi. They have some foreign supporters, and the US deep state made no secret of its intention to replicate the Bangladesh experience in India. Soros, a Hungarian-born billionaire takes pride in announcing that he has allocated billions of dollars for destabilising India. The tukde tukde Bharat slogan was raised from the same quarters so was the Shaheen Bagh episode. The defeat in the Delhi assembly elections is in truth a rout for anti-India elements whether in or outside India. Interestingly, while a substantial Muslim vote share has gone to BJP, thereby proving wrong the decades-old propaganda that only Congress or AAP are the benefactors of the Muslim community, the BJP can be comforted in the conviction that minorities in India are as nationalistic and patriotic too.
As the world’s largest democracy, India is proving that she can give a new direction to the world order.
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