Why the Delhi voter's self-interest is good news for AAP, democracy

The Indian voter has a rich history of rejecting the party in power at the Centre in favour of parties that address local concerns in state elections

This blog has been provoked by two comments a friend made yesterday. In the first, he expressed his befuddlement with the Delhi voter and why they would not want the same party – Bharatiya Janata Party – in power at the state and the Centre, which would ostensibly make for more in-sync governance at both levels. 

The second, later in the evening, suggested that the election would be a referendum on Amit Shah’s prowess in electoral strategy. 

The Delhi elections are shaping up to be a messy free-for-all, with most polls suggesting that the Aam Aadmi Party will emerge as the single largest entity in the Assembly, if not an outright winner. 

What this suggests is not a lack of political self-interest in the minds of the Delhi voter, as my friend suggested, but rather a clear-headed understanding of the federalist spirit, which is fundamental to any democracy. 

Voters in India are rarely in doubt of which party will serve their immediate needs – whether it is through better governance or through networks of caste or more parochial affiliations. At the local level, they typically vote for the party that promises to address their most immediate needs rather than some overarching ideological position. 

The point here is that in any strong democracy, it is important that this balance of power between states and the Centre is maintained. Concentration of power in a single party at state and federal levels is a recipe for dilution of the public interest. 

In fact, this sort of state vs Central government conundrum has been at the heart of Indian democracy. Voters have, time and again, firmly upheld this inherent sense of federalism, choosing one party for the state and another for the Centre – through the UPA’s rule, Rajasthan, Chattisgarh, Karnataka, UP and most recently, Orissa, come to mind. 

While some states in the country embraced the saffron wave in the national elections – besides being spurred by an anti-incumbent mood at the local level (such as Jharkhand and Maharashtra) – a couple held out (Jammu and Kashmir and the Bihar and Jharkhand bye-elections). 

One could argue that electoral issues in J&K are very different from the rest of the country, but the Bihar and Uttarakhand bye-elections that came before it showed the voters were quite certain about differentiating between local and national governments. The Nitish-Lalu combine took 6 out of 10 seats, while the BJP lost two of the six seats it had held. In Uttarakhand, the ruling Congress party won all 3 seats, taking its tally to 35 in a House of 70. 

Sheila Dikshit, the widely-admired former chief minister of Delhi, led the Congress to power in Delhi in 1998, when the UPA was being voted out at the Centre (she herself lost the Parliamentary election). Through successive terms, she kept her focus on local issues and fought elections on those. Delhi's voters enthusiastically returned that trust thrice, turning away only when allegations of corruption against her emerged, at the same time that a plucky anti-corruption crusader named Arvind Kejriwal crashed the electoral party. 

Which brings me to the second point: If the AAP wins again and manages to form a government on its own this time, it will not be because voters love Narendra Modi or Amit Shah less – after all, they gave the BJP a clean sweep in the state during the national elections – but because they love Delhi, and themselves, more. And that is the most robust affirmation of federalism one can hope for.