Kejriwal effect: It's an entire army versus one man
Elections are won by forging strong vote-banks and vote-banks are usually built around caste, region or religion. But the capital showdown of 2015 is an election like none other. This is possibly India's first Assembly poll that's being fought on the basis of economic divisions in society. It's the have-nots versus the haves.
And the have-nots of the capital are firmly rooting for Arvind Kejriwal. The rich dismissed AAP's 49-day government as a joke, they sniggered at the CM's dharna outside Rail Bhawan and they were glad that the circus in town got over when Kejriwal brought his government down on the Jan Lokpal Bill. Never again the middle-classes swore, would they get carried away by the idealistic rhetoric of the political pied piper called Kejriwal.
The have-nots too were unhappy with the Mufflerman. But for different reasons. They were disillusioned because the captain had crash landed a government they had voted for with such high hope. The poor actually liked those 49 chaotic days. That was when electricity and water bills had halved and the neighbourhood cop and bijliwala were too scared to ask for bribes. The day Kejriwal's government fell is the day the ravenous agent of the state was back on the poor man's door asking for his monthly hafta.
When the AAP government fell in February last year disillusionment filled the air. There was strong anger against AAP. Elections in Delhi in the immediate aftermath of the general elections would have seen the BJP sweep to power riding on the crest of the Modi wave. But that's when the Chanakyas of the BJP made one of their gravest strategic errors. They underestimated the Mufflerman - yet again. So sure were they that AAP would implode that they kept delaying the state elections. The loud cacophony of the charges against Messers Ambani and Adani haunted the BJP so much that they wanted to keep the Kejriwal loudspeaker silent for as long as possible. No irritants could be allowed to tar the air as Modi went about fulfilling his promise to usher in Achhe Din.
Hammered at the Lok Sabha hustings, battle-heartened and shorn of some his initial idealism, Kejriwal set up the ultimate Indian neta in trouble trick. He apologised. He said sorry to the 90-year old grand aunt, to the college student, to the sabziwala and to the rickshawallah. He said sorry wherever he went. Over and over again. Till the time the message had sunk in. The man had realised his mistake and would not commit the same folly. The babu turned activist had become a real neta.
The Indian voter has a high propensity to forgive. He forgave Indira for the horrible excesses of the emergency and even Modi for what happened during the Gujarat riots. Kejriwal's sins were minor in comparison.
While BJP's new commander Amit Shah was busy pulling off improbable electoral victory after victory in Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand and a solid showing in Jammu and Kashmir, Kejriwal dug in his heels and didn't move out of the Delhi trenches. By the time the BJP army returned after a successful Bharat Vijay Abhiyan, the diminutive AAP had made serious inroads into battlefield Delhi.
When it comes to choosing between having the rich or the poor on your side, netas may socialise with the rich at night but would rather court the poor during the day. Especially during election season. 60 per cent of Delhi's 1.3 crore voters survive on less than Rs 13,500 per month. This is the aspiring class, the have nots, who are Kejriwal's biggest backers in the battle between David and Golaith.
Over the past two weeks, I have travelled far and wide across the capital, to parts that I didn't even know existed. The Delhi that the underclass inhabits is very different from the Delhi where I live. Nizamuddin too has civic problems, but none as grave as the existential crises that confronts the underprivileged every day of their lives. Speak to whom you will in the narrow by lanes of Ballimaran, in the urban mess of Moti Nagar, or the concrete village of Munirka, the have-nots are pushing firmly for the jhadoo.
If Modi's breathless campaign during the general elections broke new frontiers and would serve as a text book example for future elections, the BJP campaign in Delhi cannot seem to put a foot right, stumbling from one faux pas to the next.
Kiran Bedi was brought in with much hope and touted as a game-changer. She's proved to be a game-changer. But not necessarily in the way the BJP hoped. Local leaders have gone into a shell and while they are going through the motions to show that the top bosses they are hard at work, in their hearts they are sulking and waiting for the leadership's gambit to fail. Bedi was brought in too close to the elections for her to be able to align herself with the party worker. Not only are her views at variance from those of the party on many issues, her police officer mannerisms are not going down well in a state where every leader is used to doing his own thing. As I travelled with the Bedi road show in Krishna Nagar, I saw the same 100-odd party workers dance and burst crackers alongside the cavalcade from one town square to the next. The real aam aurat looked out of the window but didn't bother to join the procession.
Amit Shah quickly realised that the Delhi BJP leadership is simply too faction-ridden, uninspiring and inept to be trusted to win the polls for the party. So he's taken charge himself. From giving more interviews in a week than he has given in a year to strategising with the party's top leaders, to micro-managing booth level strategy, the president has parked himself in the trenches. Senior ministers have been given five seats each and even at the cost of their ministry work, they are overseeing every aspect of the campaign being waged on their turf.
The RSS has been dipped into for reinforcements. Calls have been made to as far as Odisha and Jharkhand and pracharaks and committed party workers have been brought in to take charge of the BJP campaign. A parallel super-structure has been hastily built, which virtually supersedes the party's Delhi set-up. So fed up are senior leaders with the in-fighting that has crippled the BJP campaign that they have now put those workers in-charge who have no personal stake in the battle for Delhi. The additional layer provides extra support to the campaign but also adds to the confusion on the ground, with locals and outsiders often ending up working at cross-purposes.
The election also brings out the stark difference between the current state of the BJP and the Congress. When the Congress feels the odds are stacked against it, the party rolls over and waits for the inevitable defeat. When the BJP felt the odds were rising, Amit Shah and Co stretched every sinew to mount a desperate rescue effort.
Rarely before in history have so many resources been deployed by one party in a geographical area as small as Delhi. This election is literally an entire army versus one man. And what's at stake is the direction Indian politics will take from here. A win for the BJP will see a consolidation of the Modi juggernaut and add to the air of invincibility that the Shah-Modi duo have sought to build. A defeat for BJP on the other would give a fillip to anti-Modi forces before the crucial Bihar polls and establish Arvind Kejriwal as the one man who has the greatest potential to stand up to Modi in the 2019 elections provided all the opposition forces rally around him. Game on.