After taking over as Delhi's chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal and the Aam Aadmi Party are eyeing the Lok Sabha elections slated for 2014. Dipankar Gupta, sociologist, distinguished professor and director at Shiv Nadar University's Center for Public Affairs and Critical Theory, speaks to Manavi Kapur on whether Kejriwal and his team will be able to capture the national arena of politics and what they need to do to thrive in it
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is inviting aspiring candidates for tickets to contest the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. What do you think are its chances?
If AAP contests Lok Sabha from every constituency, it will be a very premature thing to do. But if it chooses its seats carefully and fights the Lok Sabha elections only from places where it has a good chance of winning, then that, I think, would be an advisable strategy. Haryana is one state from where AAP can get broad-based support, but it could also choose some major metros with care, and contest just in those.
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It should not think of overwhelming India by the number of seats it wins, but should instead plan to strike effectively and incisively so that a larger point is made. National parties are not built out of a single election and AAP should think of its future carefully and not in haste or with only passion as its guide. Urban seats today count for a lot. Additionally, rural India is not that distant from urban India as some people make it out to be. Therefore, if AAP does well in some critical urban locales, its effect, given time, will seep through to villages as well.
To become a party which hopes to have a pan-India presence, what more does AAP need to do?
I think AAP can perform creditably in some places outside Delhi provided, as I said earlier, it chooses winnable seats only. In the long run, AAP will have to become more of a party and shed its movement-like persona. There are good reasons why it must do this. A movement, especially when successful, dissolves once its goals are achieved. In this case, after AAP brings down water and electricity rates, takes VIP privileges out and pursues cases of corruption to the finish, the movement element will be over.
The next move will be towards the direction of firming up a party. It not only must ensure that what it has accomplished in its movement phase does not recur, but must also think of long-term issues. It must now plan on taking hard decisions on how to create jobs, how to provide better schools and medical care and how to make urban India more people-friendly. These cannot be accomplished in a pure movement format. They require greater deliberation and AAP must also be ready for a possible whittling down of its movement support base. But for the next six months to a year, AAP supporters and people in general want the movement elements satisfied, and Kejriwal's team should, at this point, just concentrate on these. This is why AAP should stick to these basics and move into becoming a party in terms of operational style once it has accomplished the major 'movement-like' promises it has already made.
AAP lacks the political experience of the Congress and BJP, and that shows even in the interviews which are appearing in newspapers and televisions. In such a scenario, what are the main challenges for this politically-raw party?
I do not think experience in running governments really matters that much. What experience does anybody have, really? In fact, most of those who are experienced political hands are the kind that the public recoils from. Politicians are not smart people, which is why they do what they do. They have a low cunning, they are ruthless, they are self-seeking. We know all this so well and yet so many still clamour for 'political experience'. Beats me! If AAP can run a government which is corruption-free and also devoid of VIP swagger, it will win the hearts of people for at least the next couple of years. During this time, it should make its transition into becoming a political party. Experience has nothing to do with this. Goodwill and honesty matter. What experience did (Jawaharlal) Nehru or (Sardar) Patel have before India became Independent? Or, just to drive the point home and descending to more profane levels, what experience did Mamata Banerjee, Bal Thackeray, or NT Rama Rao have? Or for that matter, what experience does Rahul Gandhi have?
