Kejriwal did in Delhi what Devi Lal
in Haryana in 1987 to win votes
A spectre is haunting India. It is
the spectre of AAP. The big and beaten Congress is shivering so much that it is
bending backward and careful not to rub the wrong way either AAP or its
helmsman Arvind Kejriwal. Similarly, the BJP has kept its eyes peeled to
find a way out of the gridlock created by AAP in Delhi, which threatens to
spread across the country. Till just a couple of weeks back, the 2014 contest
was limited to Narendra Modi of BJP and Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi,
with a handful of regional bargain-seekers screaming for a “third front”. But
the table has turned extra quick, with the fear of the AAP ‘virus’ spreading
nationwide. As information trickled out of AAP office that the party may
contest over 300 seats in the Lok Sabha polls, rather than brushing is off as
the swagger of a newbie, all bets are suddenly off, and big parties are busy
barring their doors. After Congress president was slammed by AAP with a
hard-hitting letter of conditions for accepting her party’s support to form government
in Delhi, which included that VIPs like her must give up their bungalows in the
sprawling Lutyens Zone, not a word came from her trolls in response to such
‘impudence’. But the BJP is fully aware of the consequences of AAPrising.
These doubts are undoubtedly grounded
on facts. AAP is still a blueprint, and Kejriwal has more bluster than actual
plan. Nor does Kejriwal’s boy-next-door image make him unassailable, as Modi is
an ex-tea boy in a shanty shop. It is said of Modi that he is dictatorial in
temperament who has no time for dissenters. But those who know Kejriwal know
that he can be an autocrat if he gets power. Since the formation of AAP in
October last year, Kejriwal has remained ‘more equal than others’ though he
insists on consulting grass roots workers. Earlier this year, Modi corralled
BJP top leaders to get their support as the party’s prime ministerial candidate
for 2014. It’s much in the same way that Kajriwal has hijacked Anna Hazare’s
anti-corruption movement to set up a political party to the immense chagrin of
his ex-mentor. Within AAP too, men of stature, like activist lawyer Prashant
Bhushan, have lost their individual significance. Bhushan had to swallow his
sudden remark that AAP should form the government in Delhi with BJP’s support.
Kejriwal’s Delhi campaign is an
eye-opener to those who always believed elections in India to be long, arduous
and highly expensive confrontations, like Trafalgar, Austerlitz or similar big
battles long ago. Once Kejriwal identified that every Delhi citizen had felt he
or she was being cheated by the government on public services—be it water,
electricity, health or education—it took him no time to put together an
architecture of campaign in which his army of unpaid IITians and spontaneously
raised army of volunteers were to play the pivotal role.
Rahul Gandhi has said he’d to learn
from AAP its technique, adding charmingly that “we’ll do it better”. Modi too
must be trying to master the technique. But one reason why the AAP style of
campaign is difficult to copy is that its success depends on honest and
committed volunteers, and a set of grievances that touch a chord with the
people. Modi, on the other hand, begins with a mismatch between his promise of
good governance, and his potential volunteers, who are all known faces involved
in communal politics. Besides, Modi is not quite an icon of transparency himself,
having run his state government in Gujarat in an opaque manner. But Kejriwal is
an RTI activist and founder of Parivartan (NGO), a feat acknowledged
internationally when he won the Ramon Magsaysay award 2006 for young leaders.
Is he an anarchist? Perhaps yes or
no. But so does populist politics often become. In the 1987 assembly poll in
Kejriwal’s native state of Haryana, Devi Lal bested his Congress rival and
chief minister Bhajan Lal when he appealed to the farmers not to pay the
electricity bills even if the government cut supplies, as he promised to give
them free power if he got elected. He also implored them not to repay bank
loans as he’d waive their loans after coming to power. It worked wonders. The
promise of freebies prompted rout of Congress, and Devi Lal’s entry. Pretty
much the same thing happened when the UPA-1 government, at Congress’ prodding,
unfolded a gigantic farm debt waiver scheme in 2008-09 of Rs 71,600 crore
coupled with MANREGA..
Seven hundred litres of water free of
cost everyday per family (for comparison, a room at the Taj Mansingh uses 1,600
litres daily). Electricity at half the present cost. No VIP security in
Delhi. No ad-hoc teachers in government schools yet they must be the best
schools, and more numerous. More metro and more buses, at lower tariff. More
slum colonies to be regularized and domestic workers to be paid minimum
wages.
It is a recipe for class war. While
the better-off classes may be horrified, to the vast majority of poor Indians,
the promises should sound like music across the urban and semi urban India.
When so many people live on footpath in Mumbai, what does the little man care
for the fate of Mukesh Ambani’s 27-storey palace? A new airport is coming up in
Navi Mumbai, but how many people in the city can dream of flying? And, in
Chennai, if Ms Jayalalitha has high-cost back-up power in her Poes Garden
house, why should the poor live without electricity in the city’s sweltering
heat? Unlike Modi, Kejriwal is not a pedlar of hope and growth. But he is firing
up a volcano of popular anger.
(The author is National Editor of
Lokmat group of newspapers and based in Delhi)
