Shock and Awe: Aam Aadmi Sweeps Delhi

10:21 a.m.; 10 February 2015-02-11

The Modi wave has broken on Delhis shoreline. As it recedes, it leaves behind a
ruling party whose reverie of unending years in power has been rudely interrupted
and a supreme leader suddenly vulnerable to searching questions from within.
Those questions had begun to be asked from outside but a sense of shock and awe
from Modis electoral sweep of May 2014 remained. With its dramatic sweep of the
Delhi state assembly elections, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) dispels that pall of
silence. Normalcy has been restored to politics and the technocratic dream of
development that the BJP sold to cover up its hard sectarian political identity, stands
exposed as an unimaginative fantasy.
What should have been a solid sixty seat triumph if the voting pattern of last years
Lok Sabha election had persisted, has become a rout for the BJP which has failed to
reach double digits in a seventy member assembly. Lofty silence, which has been
Prime Minister Narendra Modis preferred recourse so far, is now no option. His
authoritarian disregard for party and cabinet colleagues, his intent to go his own way
and subtly coerce everybody else into line, his anxiety to secure global approval
while maintaining an enigmatic silence on actions and statements within the flock
that led to serious worries about the directions the country was embarked upon: all
these would now come under deeper scrutiny.
Propelled by a powerful propaganda apparatus, Modi showed the energy through his
maximum campaign last year, to sell a grandiose dream to the electorate. He now
has to summon up the order of political skills he is yet to display, to address
complexities on the arena of national politics, rather than the simpler milieu of
Gujarat.
For the Congress which has literally been decimated after three consecutive terms in
power in the National Capital Territory (NCT), the challenge is becoming
progressively more difficult. History shows that once it slips into third place in any
state, it rarely manages to claw its way back to political relevance. The plaintive cries
now being heard for inducting Priyanka Gandhi into the top leadership, only
compound the partys crisis of public credibility.

The Congress oversaw a transformation of the city and its environs in demographic
and infrastructural terms. It may then have fallen victim to its own conceit that it had
secured a lockhold over Delhis ambitions, that demography indeed had changed so
radically that traditional BJP constituencies where it saw its main challenge, were
thoroughly marginalised. But there were thwarted aspirations just beneath the
veneer and a real sense of deprivation and economic disenfranchisement among the
masses of working people who kept the city running. In the event, it took an
insurgent campaign to tap into these hidden veins.
AAPs campaign began in scattershot displays of anger against the established order
but was then transformed into an organised effort to change things. The antiestablishment message could take it some distance but had to be enhanced with a
positive message to ensure a shift of established political loyalties. This the AAP
ensured through an agitation programme in some of Delhis least affluent areas,
focused on improved delivery of basic needs. Then followed the real organisational
effort propelled by the cadre of young and highly-skilled political activists that Arvind
Kejriwal managed to rally to the cause.
The AAP sweep in Delhi promises to energise politics in far corners of the country.
Parties of the left had for the first time in years, coordinated their efforts in the Delhi
elections. It was always a losing hand and in a final gesture, the left parties had
issued a directive that AAP should be the party of choice for the faithful in
constituencies where they were not in play. Curiously, arch rival Mamta Banerjee
from distant West Bengal issued an identical directive: that AAP should be the
preferred choice of the Delhi voter who set any store by her word.
The Delhi outcome also comes at the same time that the disjointed fragments of the
old Janata Dal Lohia socialists and agrarian populists seek unity to beat back the
BJP juggernaut. There is a degree of purpose evident in a rather dubious cause:
evicting the dalit chief minister of Bihar, Jitan Ram Manjhi, so that Nitish Kumar can
reclaim the office for his coalition of OBCs. The BJP, which briefly sought to stay out
of these factional enmities, has plunged in with unseemly enthusiasm to manipulate
numbers in the Bihar legislative assembly, further eroding its public credibility.
Finally, the AAP sweep in Delhi represents the promise of an exciting new brand of
politics, which goes beyond the tired clichs of the past and points towards a future

of exciting possibilities. Through a bruising campaign, with its fair share of dirty tricks
and political innuendo, AAP spokespersons showed a rare persistence in
maintaining a certain candour and humility in the public discourse. The BJP and the
Congress, unable to see the shift in the mood, kept up a steady barrage of insults of
the public intelligence. They now confront the harsh consequences of their
purblindness. And other parts of the country gaze towards Delhi in the hope that the
AAP brand of politics could sprout and flourish more widely.