[Critics like to call Kejriwal, the 45-year old former tax official who founded the AAP, an anarchist. Arun Jaitley, a top BJP politician, has dubbed him an “Urban Maoists”, a phrase that has been gleefully repeated by BJP supporters – notably on a chat show on CNN-IBN, a tv channel financially controlled by Mukesh Ambani of the Reliance (RIL) group who is a keen Modi supporter.]
By John Elliott
Most voters of course will not do
that. It looks as if they will instead vote overwhelmingly for the Bharatiya
Janata Party and Narendra Modi, its prime ministerial candidate; in order to
get what they hope will be instant change in terms of economic growth and
business confidence, while leaving unchanged the existing corrupt basic system
of political power, graft and patronage.
Others will vote despairingly for
Congress led by Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia because they fear Modi’s
controversial reputation as Gujarat chief minister and the BJP’s creeping Hindu
nationalism that will insinuate its way divisively into people’s daily lives.
This means that the key unknowns in
the election are not whether the BJP will win – it will – but whether the AAP
will surprise critics and win support, and maybe even seats, across the
country, not just in and around its power centre of Delhi. The other unknown is
whether Congress will do so badly that it falls below 100 seats in the 543 seat
elected legislature.
Critics like to call Kejriwal, the
45-year old former tax official who founded the AAP, an anarchist. Arun
Jaitley, a top BJP politician, has dubbed him an “Urban Maoists”, a phrase that has been
gleefully repeated by BJP supporters – notably on a chat show on CNN-IBN, a tv
channel financially controlled by Mukesh Ambani of the Reliance (RIL) group who
is a keen Modi supporter.
Kejriwal and his people do show some
aspects of anarchy because, expanding from their original anti-corruption base,
they want to overthrow the current political order that they regard as immoral.
Kejriwal says the AAP is “not in this for electoral politics but to change the
system”. And they do behave as agitators rather than conventional politicians.
They are however neither anarchists nor Maoists because they want to reform the
parliamentary system from within, not overthrow it (which is the aim of India’s
more rural Maoists, usually known as Naxalites).
Ahmed Rashid, a leading Pakistani
journalist and regional analyst, who heard Kejriwal speak at the India Today
Conclave earlier this month, told me that the AAP leader was what Imran Khan,
the former cricketer and leader of a Pakistan political party, should have
been. Imran wasn’t what was needed “because he doesn’t know the country”,
whereas there was “no other politician like Kejriwal in South Asia because of
his mastery of facts and figures on poverty and deprivation”. (Rashid could
have added that Imran is widely regarded as intellectually “dim”, which
Kejriwal is not).
The system certainly needs reforming
if India is to avoid the gradual implosion of institutions that I describe in
my recently published best-selling book IMPLOSION: India’s Tryst with Reality
(see below). Crony capitalism involving corrupt extortionist politicians and
bureaucrats in league with business at all levels, together with corrupt judges
and cruel and often corrupt police, are gradually whittling away at
institutions and are crippling India’s economic and social base.
Modi can change some of that –
dramatically compared with the way that the government has been run by prime
minister Manmohan Singh and his political bosses Sonia and (recently) Rahul
Gandhi. He can gradually introduce growth-oriented policies and, if he appoints
competent ministers and steering top bureaucrats, can transform India’s
short-term image. More on that nearer the elections.
He is reputed to run a basically
clean government in Gujarat where he has been chief minister since 2002, but
there are nevertheless widespread hints of crony capitalism.
Kejriwal has done the country a
service by mentioning two groups in particular – Reliance, whose Ambani family
originated in Gujarat, and the Gujarat-based Adani group that has grown
exponentially in infrastructure and allied industries during the past ten or so
years.
Politicians – and most other opinion
formers – rarely dare to attack Reliance. Kejriwal’s allegations of Ambani
holding hidden bank accounts abroad, receiving business favours in Modi’s
Gujarat and fixing gas Delhi gas prices were sensitive enough for Reliance to
issue denials on social media with U-Tube videos.
Such disruptive allegations are not
welcomed by India’s establishment, and indeed the AAP’s message of wider
disruption is not welcomed by many Indian voters who habitually resist change
and tolerate their lot. People grumble about corruption and bad governance and
took to the streets three years ago in mass country-wide protests that led to
the creation of the AAP. Now, however, most want Modi to produce growth and
stop the more outrageous top-level corruption practised by the current
government.
The way that the AAP behaved during
the 49 days from last December that it ran the government of Delhi, with
Kejriwal as chief minister, is widely criticised. Kejriwal and his ministers
hit the headlines more for staging street-level demonstrations and other
visible protests than for sitting in their offices taking conventional decisions.
The law minister clashed with police when he tried to take over their job and
ordered them around on the streets. But AAP spokesman, Rahul Mehra, lists the
successes as tackling low-level corruption, especially in the police, and
producing short-term solutions on electricity and water supplies.
Kejriwal resigned after the 49 days
because the AAP’s anti-corruption (Lok Pal ombudsman) legalisation was
blocked by the central government, which
now temporarily runs Delhi under what is know as president’s rule till new
elections are held later in the year.
That failure to perform as a rational
and conventional government has dismayed middle class supporters, though many
of them are still prepared to give the AAP continued support. It also looks as
if Kejriwal has expanded his base among the poorer groups, who recognise the
value for them of what the AAP was trying to do in Delhi and have none of the
middle-class aversion to them Kejriwal style of upheaval.
Kejriwal combines being an astute
street-level performer with a serious side that he displays when he meets
people in calmer situations. I watched
him impress the India Today Conclave audience when, apart from some probably
valid but also over-egged criticisms of Modi’s Gujarat (where he had just made
a high profile visit), he produced sound facts and reason to support his
criticisms and claims. With smaller groups, he talks knowledgably about
policies – for example on foreign investment in supermarkets, which the AAP
blocked in Delhi but which Kejriwal is prepared to support if positive evidence
is produced.
Neither he nor his party is however
yet ready for government, not in Delhi and obviously not nationally. Their main
value is that they are affecting the way parties think and speak – Rahul Gandhi
in particular voices Kejriwal’s line about devolving power to the people and
their local representatives.
The next few weeks will show how far
the AAP can go. It has so far announced 350 candidates. Kejriwal is expected to
sharpen the contest with Modi by standing against him in the key Uttar Pradesh
constituency of Varanasi on the banks of the Ganges, which could generate
violent clashes. The candidates are an odd medley of activists, teachers,
journalists, ex-bureaucrats and opportunistic politicians defecting from other
parties. Inevitably, for such a new and rapidly growing party, there are
multiple egos and little cohesion.
If the AAP only wins a few of Delhi’s
seven parliamentary constituencies, it will be seen as locally significant but
little more. It will be able to declare moderate success if it wins another ten
or so seats in other constituencies, some adjacent to Delhi and others further
away. Its success will depend partly on whether it manages to draw voters away
from regional parties, which logically it should in places for example like UP,
Bihar, and Tamil Nadu where locally based parties are even more corrupt that
the Congress and BJP.
Kejriwal claims – almost certainly
unrealistically – that the AAP will win 100 seats, and that Congress will get
below that number. That would make the party a leading opposition force, but
the figure is regarded by almost all observers as unlikely. India, they say, is
not yet ready for such a Tryst with Reality, or is it?
John Elliott’s new book IMPLOSION – India’s
Tryst with Reality is available in India at Flipkart http://bit.ly/1ghRWnA ,
and in Pakistan on pre-order from Liberty Books http://bit.ly/1lgfcWh . E-books
will be available on-line in India and internationally later this week.
