A party that fizzled out too fast

Around two years ago began a revolution in the city of Delhi. The story behind the revolution is quite long and started with Anna Hazare a social worker who revolted against the government practices and demanded a Lokpal Bill (Ombdusman) to be passed by the parliament which was hanging since the last several decades. Anna's fast unto death pledge shook the nation and there came a storm of people from all walks of life in his support. Students, professionals, businessmen, retired government officials all stood by their beloved Anna against the corrupt government to showcase the strength of democracy. But Anna had one thing clear in his mind. That he won't enter politics and will be a social worker for the remaining of his life.

Anna Hazare the the leader of India Against Corruption movement

Every group has different sort of people with different ambitions and one was Mr. Kejriwal, a part of team Anna. Kejriwal, an ex civil servant left his lucrative career to work for the welfare of the people through activism. Mr. Kejriwal had a vision different from Anna Hazare and was ready to jump in the political field and serve the people. With this determination he broke up from the Anna movement and formed India's youngest and popular Aam Aadmi Party in November, 2012.

The party caught the frenzy of the people instantly due to its unique style of campaigning which was done in a transparent manner. AAP was the first ever party to declare its donations to the last penny and display them regularly on their website. The road show model to connect with the public directly and discussing local issues made people sympathizers of the party and donations started flowing in good numbers. The party as told by Kejriwaal refuses to be guided by any ideologies and believed in the model of self governance, community building & decentralization.

The AAP had huge fan following just after its inception and became
the second largest party in the Delhi Assembly Elections

The party was critical of the BJP and the Congress and chose its battle turf to be in Delhi. December 2013 assembly elections in Delhi became the claim to fame for the party which emerged as the second largest party in the elections and formed government with the support of Congress. The helm of affairs came under Kejriwal 'The People's CM'.

Just as everything that goes down has to fall but what matters is the speed of the fall in the same way December 2013 was the tipping point for AAP. The party which promised free water, jobs and many other brownies to the electorate was unable to deliver on most of these owing to the practical constraints that any party feels when its in power. Electorate hopes were broken within 49 days when Kejriwal resigned from the CM post blaming the Congress and BJP for not cooperating with the government.

The real reason behind the resignation was may be over ambition of the AAP leaders who were seeing themselves as the king makers in the May 2014 General elections. Whatever the reason, the resignation din't go in favour of the party and Kejriwal was thought to be an offender by the public of Delhi. With an aim at Central politics after a failed stint in a state Kejriwal became ferocious in attacks against the BJP and Mr. Narendra Modi, the prime ministerial candidate of the BJP.

AAP's overconfidence can be judged from the fact that the party contested from 443 seats out of 543 seats in the country with limited money. The party was dependent on Mr. Kejriwal's road shows and the local support base most of which consisted of youth. However, the electorate wasn't kind enough towards the party this time and the party won just four seats and that too from the state from Punjab with no seats from its core state, Delhi.

A humiliating defeat for all the big leaders of the party has put it on severe back foot. What really went wrong with a revolution that promised to change the shape and structure of governance in India?

The reasons are many. Ideology is the main issue. The party doesn't have a thinking and when people with diverse thinking structures come together it will definitely lead to a chaos. The admission of popular faces in the party who in turn came just to have Lok Sabha tickets in hand proved to be another mistake. The single handed focus of the AAP in the election campaign was to malign BJP with any means possible. It was more of an anti BJP party rather than a party which advised a new route of governance.

Whatever may be the other reasons the biggest was Kejriwal's resignation form the post of Delhi CM which was clearly seen by the electorate as his overconfidence to win a sizable number of seats in the General Elections.

The party is facing a complete rout since the results have been announced. The on screen publicity dramas are back with Kejriwal refusing to sign a bail bond in a defamation case and instead opting to go to jail. This has again maligned the image of a party with many seeing it just as a publicity stunt. The latest blow was given when Shazia Ilmi, one of its co-founder quit the party and attacked Kejriwal for being inefficient. There have been rumours that the party wants a change of leadership.

Shazia Ilmi quit the party recently saying that cronies run the party

The Delhi assembly elections are again due and this time the BJP is claiming to make a clean sweep in the national capital. If this happens the chapter of AAP will come to an end before even beginning. The party should hold hands and act wisely in this crucial time. The electorate no more wants publicity stunts but wants strong performance delivered and since AAP has failed before miserably the chances of its success in the assembly elections are bleak.

Comments

  1. Anonymous11 June 2014 at 02:07

    I do agree but not at all points. Is passing anti corruption bill a crime? Was it for benefit of people or not? And getting 4 seats in first lok sabha election is good according to me. Bjp got 2 seats only in its firsr general election in 1984

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ricky11 June 2014 at 22:58

    It was definitely for the benefit of people but the whole idea of their governance was around this bill and blaming the BJP & the Congress. They were not doing much constructive work but were banking on the negative publicity that they themselves generated against the BJP primarily. And BJP started with 2 in 1984 because in that general election the major reason for Rajiv Gandhi winning was the sympathy vote he got because of assassination of Mrs. Indira Gandhi. Otherwise there is no reason why a party which got 414 seats in 1984 dwindles to even less than half in just 5 years and on the other hand BJP spurted from 2 to nearly 90. So, I think the comparison of AAP's performance with that of BJP performance is fundamentally a little flawed. BJP ought to get more in 1984 had there been normal circumstances in the country.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sunday Mood: Haircut in times of lockdown - Why an expert is required!

Since the lockdown was announced people have often complained of not being able to remember what day of the week it is! Our Sunday Mood article reminds you that another week has passed and it's a Sunday yet again! The past week can be termed as one of the most turbulent for the mutual fund industry with a leading AMC shutting its debt funds virtually trapping Rs. 30,000 crores of investor money. But, our topic of discussion today is not anywhere related to the debt market or the financial haircuts that banks and financial institutions take on their loans! Enough of that discussion has happened in the week that has passed by over phones, conference calls & Zoom conferences. Lockdown has also brought in another type of problem for men which is the inability to get a haircut! With the Home Ministry quashing the hopes on 25th April of letting salons open the Indian men realized that it is still days for them to get their much-awaited haircut. But here was me, not ready to be bo
Read more

The ultimate money making trick

Image
Let's start with a small exercise. Let's list down all our expenses on a monthly basis from January 2020 till July 2020. You may not have a ready record but you can still note down your credit card dues every month. Also, from your bank account statement, you can get a rough idea of inflows and outflows every month. The result should look somewhat as described below. Have you done your charting? Are you surprised? You already knew that you are spending far less than what was your average expenditure during the pre-lockdown phase, but you will realize the quantum of fall only by performing this exercise. In the real-life example presented in the table above, the person was able to curtail expenses by more than 50% during the lockdown. Even post-lockdown the expenses are down around 20% from average despite the fact that impulse spending has increased due to the long halt on spending. A few questions that one may ask oneself based on the exercise are: What is the major portion of
Read more

Book Review: One Life is Not Enough - K. Natwar Singh

Image
Natwar Singh's autobiography is one piece which gives us an account of the history of India back from the times when princely states reigned in the country till the present day democratic set up. A highly successful IFS officer Natwar Singh describes his diplomatic career in a refined form picking up beads from the thread of memory line and presenting all major events in his 31 year old diplomatic career starting from 1953. A good judge of personality Natwar Singh gives a personality account of most of the figures that he talks about in his autobiography using metaphors and words that suit the underlying person the most. His descriptions of literary figures like E.M. Forster, R.K. Narayan, Ahmad Ali, Santha Ram Rao and many others leaves little to imagination with regards to the literary skill of these figures and their close association with Mr. Singh. With regards to political figures Natwar Singh gives a fair picture of each personality whom he encountered during his l
Read more