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Delhi's Assembly elections, which for the last few poll cycles were held a few months before the general elections, have often served as a bellwether of popular support in urban India. However, what has for a long time been a straight fight between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress has been complicated by the presence this time around of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) led by Arvind Kejriwal, which has made a strong start to the campaign. Given the promise of the AAP - to shake up a comfortable two-party system and introduce important corruption-related issues into the political agenda - it is worth evaluating how they are going about it.
Mr Kejriwal on Sunday started a "jhadu chalao yatra" - literally, a journey to sweep clean - which plays on the party's election symbol, a broom, or jhadu. He intends to visit all of Delhi's 70 constituencies in the coming weeks. In addition, the party has spent a great deal of time on selecting and vetting its candidates, and building a ground-level organisational network. Mr Kejriwal's formidable reputation as an organiser and his experience of Delhi politics and social work mean that he seems to have few illusions about the difficulty of the task that a new party has before it. His decision to enter electoral politics is, thus, doubly commendable. The AAP has also planned to have 71 different manifestos - 70 for each seat, and one more for the city as a whole.
However, the content of the manifestos, based on published reports, is disappointing. It suggests that Mr Kejriwal's rational calculation about electoral politics is not matched by his party's commitment to rational policy. While there is little reason to question the AAP's commitment to institutional fixes for corruption in government procurement and decision making, other aspects of the manifesto betray thoughtless populism that would take Delhi backwards, not forwards. One promise that has received considerable attention is that all households would receive 700 litres of free water daily. This is bad economics and bad for the environment. Free water in a water-scarce town encourages the middle class to use it wastefully, rather than making much-needed conservation efforts. In addition, the age in which such resources can be handed out without user fees is over. Citizens, even those who are not rich, are willing to pay for services, if they are properly delivered. And only services that pay for themselves end up being properly delivered. A free-water policy is the very opposite of the direction in which policymakers should be taking Delhi.
It is unfortunate that, in its platform, the AAP seems likely to choose to promise a reduction of user fees for water and also electricity that it will find difficult to deliver. The party has promised to "fine-tune" its manifestos in the weeks leading up to the vote on December 4. It is to be hoped that, in the interaction that they promise with the voters of Delhi in this process, they note that, while citizens are naturally concerned about higher prices, they also wish that service delivery of utilities be smart, responsive and consistent. That cannot happen without market-linked pricing.
