There are other words that are similarly misunderstood, though. So I came up with a little list of them - of words, in fact, that we should stop using.
Populism: A policy choice voters like, but op-ed writers don't. Naturally, the implication is that voters can't quite work out what's in their best interests. Some would say that the only real difference should be between policies that are sustainable, and policies that aren't. If we can pay for food for everyone, for example, there's nothing wrong with providing it. If we can't pay, then we can't pay. Whether or not it is "populist" is beside the point. But saying that is either socialist or libertarian, I'm not sure which, so I'd better not.
Not every unsustainable policy choice will be called populist. Virulent nationalism directed at Pakistan or the US is not sustainable - the former because we can't really escalate confrontation with an unstable nuclear-armed country, and the latter because, well, they're big and they don't really care about us, and we just look silly playing the mouse that roared. However, although unsustainable and popular, a hyper-sensitive foreign policy is not called "populist", because op-ed writers and wild-eyed ex-Ambassador "experts" are even more hawkish than the general population. And then there's the question of subsidies. According to these Scrooge McSchmucks, food subsidies are populist, while export subsidies are responsible. Employment guarantees are populist, but free water in Delhi is what the Aam Aadmi wants. Which leads us to...
Aam Aadmi: The common man. If the aam aadmi in question is rural, then the Congress claiming to address his concerns counts as anti-reform, Indira-era socialism. If the aam aadmi in question is urban, then Arvind Kejriwal claiming to address his concerns is a transformational moment which redefines Indian politics. Land grabs for industrialisation are anti-aam aadmi; land grabs for middle-class residential construction are, well, South Delhi. The Indian elite, not satisfied with incorrectly calling itself middle-class, now has decided to imagine itself as being a rung lower, a magnificent bit of self-delusion.
Governance: Everyone imagines it is vitally important, but nobody knows for sure what it is. However, they think they know it when they see it, as the US Supreme Court hopefully said about pornography. Governance explains everything about election results, but only after the fact, and only when carefully defined to explain the results. If the Rajasthan government lost elections after delivering social services, it was because it was "populist"; if the Chhattisgarh government won after doing the same, it was because of "governance".
The opposite of "governance" is "scams". In other words, UPA-I delivered "governance" and was re-elected. UPA-II instead committed lots of scams and won't be. The fact that the scams were in UPA-I does not in any way change the fact that governance is what voters want.
Aspiration: What op-eds imagine voters have. It is a carefully circumscribed word, because aspiration can never be for "populist" things. You can't aspire to food security or clean water; you aspire to a private-sector job and an English education. Common people aspire, in fact, to be an aam aadmi, which is a philosophically and linguistically confusing state of affairs. National parties like the BJP and the Congress are supposed to appeal to aspiration. Regional parties, like the Bahujan Samaj Party or the Samajwadi Party, instead ignore aspirations to address yesterday's oppressions, reversing which is not a worthy aspiration. World history's greatest lesson: the highest form of aspiration is the aspiration to see yourself in your state. Here and now, that ignoble desire is called "vote-bank politics".
Appeasement: What the Congress does to minorities. When the Aam Aadmi Party's Manish Sisodia wore a cap with "I am a common man" written in Urdu at Nizamuddin Auliya's dargah the other day, it is, on the other hand, good politics. Appeasement is a crime against governance, because it causes elections to be fought about things such as riots, when they should be fought over infrastructure. Muslims, in not voting for "governance" or "aspiration" but instead for whoever's least likely to kill them are being the stupidest of voters - even stupider than all those who don't seem to want to vote for "reform".
If they could just stop being alarmist and stop imagining threats to themselves, we could all get on with life, couldn't we? They should learn from poor Narendra Modi, and just be a bit more creative about history. As Modi's blog post on the subject said, he was "wracked with pain and agony" after the 2002 riots - about which he writes entirely in the passive tense - but he "suffered in solitude" because he was so busy "urging peace and restraint". After reading Modi's post, I re-watched Rakesh Sharma's documentary film "Final Solution" (an edited version of which is available for free on YouTube, where I urge you to watch it). There was Narendra Modi speaking in 2002, tortured with anguish at "shattering" events, urging peace and restraint on an crowd: "Don't listen to people who say the Gujaratis are rioters... At Godhra, 58 devotees were killed. And in spite of this, no one killed or looted any shops or raped anyone. People are spreading rumours. They are defaming Gujarat."
That, right there, is not appeasement. It is governance. See the difference?
mihir.sharma@bsmail.in