VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA
The severe infighting in Aam
Aadmi Party (AAP), which led to the expulsion of Yogendra Yadav and Prashant
Bhushan from the decision making bodies of the party, is clearly a classic case
of breach of trust of people’s mandate in Delhi .
It is also a grim reminder for the people in the entire country for future
elections that whenever they experiment with a new party, they should be
careful with their votes and not get swayed only by slogans, emotions and loud
talk.
I do not hold a brief for the
ousted leaders of AAP but this is not what the party set out for when it was
founded. The people of Delhi had not bargained for this and the reduction of an
anti-corruption movement for Jan Lokpal in a party of petty fights, where power
has gone into the head of a few and authoritarianism, dictatorship and coterie
has replaced collective wisdom. The popularity graph of the party, which got
landslide only weeks ago, has nosedived to such an extent that surveys say that
there has been a complete erosion of the faith of the people within six weeks
of the massive victory. Has this ever happened in any part of the world where
democracy is practiced? Have the people lost their trust on a Government so
soon after electing a Government?
After being elected in Delhi ,
all AAP Government did was to make power and water either free or reduce its
tariff. There is still nothing to show beyond the symbolism. But the greater
damage was the way it handled the crisis within and violated the trust imposed
on it by the people through their massive mandate. In the process, Arvind
Kejriwal, hailed as a great communicator not long ago, proved to be another
Manmohan Singh when he refused to speak on the crisis, triggered by the dissent
of Yadav, Bhushan and others. The Delhi Chief Minister seems to have learnt his
lessons from the Congress where party chief Sonia Gandhi and vice-president
Rahul Gandhi never speak on anything important either related to the party or
issues facing the country.
When the campaign for Delhi
was being run, people thought that AAP was different from both the Congress and
the BJP. While in the Congress, it is Sonia Gandhi and Rahul from number one to
number 10 positions, in the BJP it is the strict disciplinarian approach of the
party which counts. This is what we thought—AAP would be entirely different, it
is a transparent organisation where decisions are taken not at the whims or
fancy of an individual or the collective might of a group of individuals but
through consensus building. People thought this was the way for the future of
Indian politics—common people who had no political background in the past were
out to cleanse Indian politics of the ills plaguing it.
AAP has let not only its
supporters down but, also all those who were veering to the idea which the
party held. What is tragic is it let them down not like no other party has ever
done in the past. In 1984 when Rajiv Gandhi won a landslide, it took a
year-and-half when its sheen was lost. AAP lost it within 6 weeks. ItRss sad,
extremely sad, the way they have blown away the trust of the people.
So, there is no scope for
alternative politics now through AAP and no choice for the people beyond the
Congress and the BJP at the national level. AAP has reduced itself to a poor
cousin of the Congress in politicking, leaders calling each other names and
internal party differences. Perhaps Kejriwal himself and his supporters believe
that elections are won only through a charismatic leader and what he says and
how he communicates with the people. ItRss only partly true. Elections are won
when people genuinely believe that the alternative being offered is radically
different from the one which they have. This is what happened with the BJP and
Narendra Modi in May 2014 and with AAP and Kejriwal in February 2015. Elections
are won when a large number of people work for a common cause and an entire
team is involved whole heartedly and is committed. A committed and brilliant
team was behind Modi and so was behind Kejriwal which included the likes of
Yadav and Bhushan.
The symptoms and trend of
dictatorship was there in AAP earlier also when sitting MLAs had questioned
party leadership and joined other parties. But all was forgotten in the
landslide where it won 67 of the 70 seats. Even if Yadav, Bhushan, Anand Kumar
and others are removed as primary members of the party, I am sure another crop
of leaders would soon rise against the style of functioning of Kejriwal and the
way dictatorship is replacing consensus politics.
Moving beyond the reduction of
AAP as merely another political party, what worries me is the ground situation
in Punjab where the people trusted the new party and
gave it a quarter of the votes in the Lok Sabha elections and four Members of
Parliament. As AAP has practically decided to become a regional party confined
to Delhi , there has been another
breach of trust with 34 lakh people in Punjab who had
voted for it in parliamentary polls. Those people voted for alternative
politics, something which the ruling Akali Dal-BJP combine on one hand and the
Congress on the other is not following. They wanted change. Now all that trust
has gone with AAP sticking to Delhi
and deciding that it would not contest Assembly polls in other States. In the
by-elections for Dhuri Assembly segment, a part of Sangrur parliamentary constituency
which was won by Bhagwant Mann of AAP in the Lok Sabha polls, the party has not
fielded any candidate. This was a great opportunity for AAP making a debut in
the Punjab Assembly and use it as a launching pad for State Assembly polls in
February 2017.
When people of Punjab
voted for AAP in large numbers in the parliamentary polls, they thought of
moving beyond the predictable political paradigm of SAD-BJP and he Congress.
Now when they see what is happening within the party, there is frustration and
the hope is belied. Now, even if AAP tries, it will never be able to break the
stranglehold of the SAD-BJP and the Congress given its track record of
infighting in Delhi and abandoning
the trust of the people of Punjab who gave the then
fledgling party four seats in Punjab .
Not surprisingly, Dr Dharamvir
Gandhi, the social worker and doctor who defeated Preneet Kaur from Patiala
on AAP ticket in the polls, is also on his way out like Yadav and Bhushan. He
was the lone Punjab MP from AAP who questioned the way the two were treated in New
Delhi on Saturday in the internal meeting of the
party. He was the face of change and alternative politics in Punjab
and with his possible exit from the party, AAP seems to have lost whatever
support it enjoyed in the State. (March
30, 2015 )
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