Some insignificant men

Mr Kejriwal, and his former cohorts such as gave all hours access during their political campaign for the making of the film An Insignificant Man

In the public park near my house there has been unexpected construction activity for more than six months. Given the endless digging, piles of rubble and obstruction to street traffic you might be mistaken in thinking that a skyscraper was about to go up. Instead a garden gate has been built — a huge eight-pillared monstrosity of unimaginably ugly design, covered in granite, with fancy pediment and red roof tiles. A black stone plaque at the top announces the point of this pointless edifice: “Public Park. Madan Lal, MLA.”

Mr Madan Lal, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislator of the area, is a lawyer and founder of the district court’s bar association. The residential area’s deteriorating civic conditions — an overflowing garbage dump bordering the park, choked sewage, and crumbling roads — have eluded him in completing this wasteful folly from his public fund, its sole purpose being to show that he is an significant man.

His foolish enterprise is not merely symbolic of AAP’s governance failures halfway into its tenure but ironic with the recent release of a film, An Insignificant Man, which charts the rise of Arvind Kejriwal in 2013-15. Made by two young filmmakers, Khushboo Ranka and Vijay Shukla, who prefer not to describe it as a documentary, their hour-and-a-half venture, culled from 400 hours of footage, has been widely applauded at film festivals from Toronto to London. 

Mr Kejriwal, and his former cohorts such as Yogendra Yadav, gave them all hours access during their political campaign that the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) refused. The result is a dramatic, often uninhibitedly glorifying memorial but, like Mr Madan Lal’s garden fantasy, ultimately pointless. As an exercise in cinema verite it takes us only to the point of AAP’s thunderous victory but not its wasteful aftermath. If the film’s purpose is to show that a political alternative — an anti-corruption, broom-wielding “people’s party” — is possible to behemoths such as the BJP and Congress, it carries no hint of Mr Kejriwal’s disastrous administration and political mismanagement. Free water and slashed electricity bills, yes, but as the overflowing garbage dumps, choked sewers and mammoth pollution crisis testify, Delhi is much worse off under AAP’s rule than before. The next state election is likely to render Mr Kejriwal truly insignificant.

It is not as if a challenge to the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah-led BJP isn’t possible. Rahul Gandhi is hard at work in Gujarat to prove his mettle. No victory could be sweeter than beating the BJP on its leadership’s home turf. 

The portents are propitious. There is widespread discontent in urban areas — the ruling party’s strongest base — over demonetisation and what 

Mr Gandhi has dubbed the “Gabbar Singh Tax”. An agrarian crisis haunts the hinterland and a mood of simmering anti-incumbency is palpable after years of BJP rule. 

As in Bihar, the Congress heir apparent and chief campaigner has shrewdly wooed caste-based leaders such as Hardik Patel, Jignesh Mevani and Alpesh Thakor. He pays due obeisance at Hindu shrines on his visits and the party has cautiously limited distribution to Muslim candidates to appease the Hindutva vote. Even the BJP’s staunchest adherents in Gujarat admit that Amit Shah’s promise of winning 150 seats (out of 182) will remain an empty boast.  

At no other time in his lacklustre political career have Mr Gandhi’s exertions seemed more effective. He is earnest, sincere and has shed some of his blundering lassitude. What he lacks by way of rousing oratory in stirring audiences is weakly compensated by a steady barrage of anti-Modi tweets (including dubious jibes at the prime minister’s failed “hugplomacy” on the day Pakistan released terrorist mastermind Hafiz Saeed). 

Can Mr Gandhi disprove his insignificance? Colleagues who have recently returned from election tours of Gujarat doubt it.

“What he lacks is a killer instinct,” says one who has followed his campaign in Gujarat. “This is reflected in the Congress party’s lack of imagination, aggression and an overall strategy.”

As in the Delhi election of 2015, which decisively voted for a change after 15 years of Congress raj, the Gujarat result will test the limits of the BJP’s supremacy. It will be a referendum on 

Mr Gandhi and his longstanding formal takeover of the Grand Old Party. It is a chance to prove that he is not an insignificant man.