The local chemist from who we pick up our supplies has been enthusiastic about AAP from its inception. Earlier, he shut shop early to join dharnas at the Boat Club and Ramlila Maidan in 2011, and now can see no wrong in anything what the Delhi chief minister and his team do. Other "barometers" I use to gauge the political mood in the city and country, are equally enthusiastic about the new state government and the party. Reasons are uniformly similar across classes: the lal batti or red beacon - has been thrown aside, security scaled down, government delivered populist polls promises, and good governance has been promised by a CM sounding like the CEO of a service provider.
People I do not know personally are also rushing to AAP. Meera Sanyal, V Balakrishnan, Captain Gopinath, Adarsh Shastri and Alka Lamba have contributed to the buzz about this year old party. Going by the general sense in the country, it appears that AAP is on the ascendance and has the potential to be a game-changer. There is a general Queen of Spades kind of a sentiment behind the attraction to AAP: the difference being that the "off with their heads" sentiment is directed at people active in party-politics prior to the anti-corruption movement. This sentiment is binding people from extreme ends of the spectrum. But how long before conflicting interest come into play?
AAP leaders say there are "good people" in other parties and their portals are open to them. This is the first risk the new party is taking because several queuing up are possibly doing so in the hope of getting a share of the cake. Sooner or later someone in the rank and file will remember that people such as Lamba had to be dropped from National Commission for Women in July 2012 for revealing the identity of a victim of molestation in Guwahati. Indiscretions of others are sure to surface once they come under the spotlight. Two divergent ends of the social canvas joining AAP for different reasons, are likely to get disillusioned with the raison d'être of the other.
Not every prominent person joining AAP - either new entrants or those making lateral movements from other parties - will boast a record of probity like Kejriwal and his core group. As AAP becomes a full-fledged political party from being a "movement" it faces this challenge. There cannot be a balancing act on this because the promise is that AAP is not to be a "substitute" but an "alternative". How can this be done if similar people join the new party with the same motivation?
AAP's growth is not based on a political process where steady politicisation of the individual is inbuilt. Instead, AAP's supporters are driven by desire for non-violent political insurgency. Instead of picking up a gun to cleanse the system, people are induced to believe that elimination of corruption and inefficiency from governance is all they need.
Despite talk of participatory democracy, absence of ideology raises the spectre of making AAP self-limiting and over-simplistic. While attempting to provide an alternative to the existing political system, AAP risks becoming a clone of one of the existing parties. AAP has every potential of becoming a neo-majoritarian party where the politics of identity is replaced by one driven by a totalitarian belief in what is appropriate.
AAP's plank jeopardises Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party that dresses up divisive and prejudice-promoting politics with talk of good governance. The so-called Gujarat model has every element that AAP promises, including statements such as "government has no business to be in business". Kejriwal is pushing for audit of discoms but further radicalisation of governance will alienate middle classes once realisation seeps in that sops leave them out of the ambit.
Till this happens, AAP has the potential to significantly damage Modi's prospects because it will take away substantial votes in urban majority seats that were inclined to go Modi's way till AAP's advent. Thus far, Modi has not identified the handle by which he can wrench AAP. Despite charges of widespread graft not sticking to his regime, Modi has never been aggressive regarding eliminating corruption. His focus has been on service delivery, streamlining governance, single-window clearance and a tough State. AAP gains by adding a moral halo to this plank - symbolised by a self-driving CM over one who speaks from bulletproof podiums and is carried by choppers to meeting grounds.
AAP's emergence is an exciting development in Indian politics. It irons out several creases emerging from identity-driven politics. But its apolitical self-righteous streak has the potential of giving rise to fresh contradictions in Indian politics. Prejudice directed at opponents - though different - may persist if there are no self-correcting devices.
The writer is author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times (Tranquebar, 2013)
nilanjan.mukhopadhyay@gmail.com
nilanjan.mukhopadhyay@gmail.com