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AAP’s muddled horizons. The euphoria around AAP may turn into despair if it doesn’t change its course.
After it made its national ambitions clear, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) seems to have emerged as the biggest curiosity in the run-up to the parliamentary elections scheduled this year. While the AAP’s entry in the gladiatorial arena of national politics could usher welcome reforms in the way big political parties operate, the party will find it difficult to match the heightened expectations it has created.
The AAP’s extraordinary debut in the Delhi assembly elections has already rattled the political class and the two major national parties. The Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) now appear to be incorporating some of the AAP’s unconventional strategies in reaching out to voters. The BJP’s “one vote, one note” fund-raising campaign, for instance, seeks to replicate the AAP’s strategy of trying to connect with its support base even while raising funds transparently. It is possible that the AAP’s entry will also make mainstream parties more careful in their selection of candidates. Perhaps it will lead to fewer candidates with criminal backgrounds in urban constituencies where the AAP’s appeal is the greatest.
The AAP’s contribution to democratic deepening in India is beyond doubt. Its success seems to have enthused a large chunk of the non-voting elite, which is acquiring a taste for politics now. Other parties have drawn in professionals in the past, often as backroom boys, but the AAP seems to be the first party that offers the sort of untainted platform many of these professionals want. The AAP’s taste of success has also lent hope to many regional political entrepreneurs across India. There have been other instances of a civil society movement crossing over into the political arena, such as by the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS) in rural Rajasthan. But never before has any transition happened so fast, and with as much impact on national politics as in the case of the AAP, which owes its origins to the 2011 movement for a national anti-corruption ombudsman.
The speed of the AAP’s rise could also be its nemesis. While the AAP’s leadership has been quick to declare its national ambitions, they are nowhere close to defining their position on important national issues facing the country, be it national security or the economy. Even on its key plank of corruption, the AAP’s solution is half-baked. It has fervently championed a “strong” Lokpal, ignoring the pitfalls and abuses such a system lends itself to. The root of rent-seeking lies in the discretionary powers of officials and ministers. The solution must therefore involve reducing such powers, and in building a network of regulatory bodies, with institutionalized checks and balances. Yet, one rarely hears the AAP leaders talking about such issues. The excesses of crony capitalism that have gnawed at the core of India’s polity and economy all these years requires an institutional fix, on which the AAP has barely anything intelligent to say.
The AAP’s chief ideologue, Yogendra Yadav, has maintained that the party will remain agnostic between the use of the state and market in economic matters but the economic policy of a national party cannot end there. Unless there is greater clarity on where the role of the state ends and where the role of the market begins and under what circumstances both are needed, it will only lead to an ideological vacuum. As long as it lacks a coherent framework to examine issues of public policy, the AAP will remain trapped in the web of populism, given its tendency to choose the path of least resistance. While this is especially problematic when dealing with national issues, often it can lead to populism even at the state level. Manish Sisodia’s statement on reservation for “locals” in Delhi University or the AAP’s populist experiments with power and water tariffs in Delhi are all products of the ideological vacuum in which it finds itself.
The absence of an alternative but realistic agenda also robs the AAP of a chance to intervene effectively in policy debates. While it can contribute to a partial cleansing of the electoral field, it has nothing substantive to offer in shaping the public discourse in the run-up to the elections. This will also be a handicap for the party in Parliament even if it is able to win a few urban seats and swing the outcomes in others. Unless the AAP changes course and starts searching for sustainable solutions to the problems facing the country, the euphoria surrounding it can well turn into despair.
The history of the previous anti-corruption movement led by Jayprakash Narayan in the seventies shows that although it could alter the shape of national politics, the party born out of that movement did not itself last long, succumbing to its internal contradictions. The AAP’s moves over the next few months will determine if history repeats itself this time.