Delhi's debate: Development vs acrimony

Whichever way Delhi votes today — and there’s a fair consensus on who the chief minister next week will be — the contest to rule the city-state is distinct from others in recent memory. First, the action has shifted from the streets to daily non-stop barracking in the media and social media. No vigorous door-to-door campaigning, as in 2015, when Aam Aadmi Party volunteers collected modest contributions to cleanse a corrupt body politic with its jhadoo symbol. “Na khaunga, na khane dunga” (I won’t be bribed, nor let anyone else pay bribes) Narendra Modi famously said when he led the BJP to power in 2014 but corruption no longer features as an issue for either party.

Second, the head-on confrontation was between two dominant figures, Arvind Kejriwal, the city’s popular chief minister, and Union Home Minister Amit Shah — a Sancho Panza fronting for Mr Modi’s Don Quixote — leading a divisive, communally charged campaign. 

And, third, Delhi’s debate of development versus Hindu-Muslim polarisation mirrors a paradigm shift in national politics. The BJP’s main agenda since last year’s general election, from the abrogation of Article 370 in Kashmir to the Citizenship Amendment Act and proposed National Population Register and National Register of Citizens, is now topped by speeding up (in Mr Modi’s words) “of a grand Ram Temple” in Ayodhya. The announcement in Parliament this week was accompanied by a chorus of “Jai Shri Ram” chants orchestrated by Mr Shah.

In Delhi Mr Shah’s hard-driven campaign and vituperative attacks have centred on a small stretch of public thoroughfare linking the city to the Noida expressway. Till a couple of months ago, when a group of Muslim women and their families started a peaceful 24x7 dharna to protest the anti-citizenship law, few had heard of Shaheen Bagh. 

It must be a sign of the Hindutva campaign’s diminishing returns that the ruling party’s acrimony narrowed on the Shaheen Bagh sit-in (and student protestors on the Jamia Milia campus in the vicinity) as its major, if not sole, election plank. Both sites were viciously portrayed as hotbeds of traitors, Pakistani infiltrators, and potential jihadis. Some protest leaders were jailed on sedition charges and random firings erupted to provoke violence.

Many loyal BJP supporters have been put off by the party’s belligerence and derailing of overriding issues such as the pollution crisis, which turns Delhi into a gas chamber for several months each year. One such example is our neighbourhood newspaper vendor, an educated, voluble young man who has steadily built on a successful family business, and usually votes for the BJP, including in last year’s national election. This time he was doubtful: “Angrezon ki policy thi ‘divide and rule’. Ab BJP ki policy hai ‘divert and rule’.” (The British’s policy was divide and rule, the BJP’s is divert and rule.)   

At a more mundane level, the AAP-BJP face-off focused on the public inconvenience caused by Shaheen Bagh’s prolonged blockage of a major artery to south Delhi and the Noida suburb. In an election fuelled by Whatsapp wars, a facetious visual meme asked “Faisla Aapka” (Your Decision) with AAP as the obstructionist party of “Har Jagah Chakka Jam” (Roadblocks Everywhere) versus BJP that would ensure “Traffic Se Aaram” (relief from traffic). 

Mr Kejriwal, who deliberately stayed away from the trouble spots, somewhat disingenuously citing law and order disruption, was pilloried for reading the Hanuman Chalisa but did not take the bait, carefully drawing the line between religion and politics. In a confident image projection of a leader in the CEO mould, of someone capable of managing the city-state’s problems, he stuck to his track record in infrastructure development and promises of enhanced civic services. The BJP’s and Congress’ biggest failure was to find a candidate to compete for Mr Kejriwal’s job.

More than any metropolitan agglomeration in the country, Delhi’s populace has highly attuned political antennae. It has witnessed the coming and going of major national leaders, from Indira Gandhi to Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh — and is not easily swayed. Its politicised inhabitants are keenly conscious they live in a privileged and prosperous place, the established habitat of the mightiest in the land. For years the city-state has topped rankings with the highest per capita GDP, leaving Mumbai behind as the financial centre. Delhi’s airport is the busiest, its Metro the largest, its government-run schools better, and its fiscal deficit modest for a small but densely packed National Capital Territory.

The result of who gets to run Delhi will also, in its way, be a referendum on the deepening fissures caused by the BJP’s nationalist politics versus the pursuit of Mr Modi’s development goals and promise of India becoming a $5-trillion economy in five years. Does his slogan of “Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas” when he came to power today seem to be lost in the mists of time?