What Modi government can learn from Kejriwal and AAP

The rise of the BJP at the cost of the Congress and the communists in the last General Election, the subsequent political upheaval caused by the Assembly poll in Delhi, and the more recent regrouping of caste-based regional parties in Bihar, indicate how the profile of national politics in India could be changing along new but definitive lines.

The sharp turnaround in the Delhi Assembly polls is now clearly decipherable in terms of the shifts that occurred in the electoral turf in the closing weeks of the run-up to that election. These added to the numbers on the winning side in a manner that looked dramatic. A ten per cent decline in the vote share of BJP between the parliamentary election and the Assembly poll, the transfer of votes from the losing Congress to the AAP in the main, and a decisive opposition of the minorities to the BJP, were easily noted.

Surge

However, there is no denying the fact that over and above the sum total of these shifts, AAP in Delhi became the beneficiary of a surge caused by a large segment of the urban youth including the educated lot and professionals who looked at it as the only non-traditional political instrument of change. They created an aura of transformational politics around the AAP.

It has to be seen now how far will their commitment and enthusiasm last: The differences at the top are already producing visible personality clashes. The steam rolling majority of the AAP in Delhi Assembly is credited to Arvind Kejriwal's mass appeal and therefore a few “intellectuals” – howsoever prominent – may not be able to cause any significant dent to his party. In the interregnum of eight months before the Assembly election, the AAP was able to revive its appeal to the people on the weaker side of the classic "class" divide in the capital, who far outweigh the other side in terms of numbers. Many of them are those who abandoned their loyalty to the Congress. Also, the AAP was able to induct "volunteers" – a more committed lot in comparison to the "cadres" working for other parties – who established better connectivity with the people and reached out to jhuggi jhonpdi clusters and middle-class colonies with the same energy.

Arvind Kejriwal – judging from his speech at Ramlila Ground – has put his party on a pro-poor, left-of-centre platform; projected himself, as the sole crusader against political corruption; and identified his party as the prime opponent of communal politics. Though he claimed that the AAP was the alternative to both the Congress and the BJP, he seemed to be pursuing the implicit aim of challenging the BJP rather than the Congress in the days ahead.

Emerging

The AAP sees itself as the emerging political force of the future in India – even as a viable alternative to the existing national parties – though Arvind Kejriwal has taken the precaution of declaring that Delhi was the party's current challenge and concern. The AAP is certainly adding to the political stream of the centre-left against the centre-right that the BJP monopolises. The AAP's credibility will be on test in the coming months since political fortunes are going to be determined now by performance and delivery. The new party has a certain brittleness about it and its showing in Delhi in terms of governance will determine its viability. The poor and the weak in India are not willing to be satisfied merely by a continuum of sympathy from the regime. Indian masses now have a new level of aspiration. They have to be made the beneficiary of development – sooner rather than later. A pro-left ideology cannot be sustained on the thought that poverty can only be alleviated not eradicated.

Consistency

This is where consistency of policy and visibility of development become important for BJP. Growth as the key to pulling the economically weak up the graph of development, can surely work if there is probity in public life and efficiency in governance. In the Indian context it is also to be accepted that politics of development would tend to dilute the community divides too. The Modi government has the challenge of consolidating its hold through this strategy and firming up its position against any strengthening of the left in the political spectrum of India, resulting from the advent of the AAP.