YPOST

Paradise Lost

The birth of AAP has its roots in a difference of opinion between Arvind Kejriwal and Anna Hazare. Both of them had been a part of the the anti-corruption movement for Jan Lokpal Bill that had gained momentum in India during 2011 and 2012.

AAP’s chief aim was to fight against the political corruption in our country; they vehemently opposed and protested against the various scams that the prevailing congress government was involved in. According to them the right to equality and justice promised to us by the constitution had not been materialized. The idea that for the first time, a civil society movement has transformed itself into a political organization and challenged established political parties and its pledge to remove corruption and to establish a free and democratic country attracted the attention of the common people. Banking upon the support of the common people and acting as their mouthpieces AAP emerged as the second-largest party in Delhi winning 28 of the 70 Assembly seats in the general assembly elections.

People had huge expectations from Aam Aadmi Party but all it got was disappointment. As time moved on they started facing strong criticisms and this started with Kejriwal suggesting a 50% cut in electricity tariffs. Party manifesto claimed to end monopolies of discoms and to introduce genuine competition where consumers can choose their own distribution company. The 50% cut off , veiled threats to private discoms, potential cancellation of their licenses would scare away the private sector and was sure to take Delhi back to the bad old days of the state owned electricity board , when tariffs were  low but no power for several hours in a day. Second instance was AAP’s decision to curb the careless use of water by promising 700 litres of water free of charge per day to all so that the consumers use the precious resource rationally.

Proper organization lacked in the party, random speeches over sensitive issues were delivered without prior discussion and one such instance was the January 2014 protest against Prashant Bhushan, who had expressed a personal opinion against the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act in Jammu & Kashmir. This caused the AAP to determine that its significant members would in future refrain from expressing opinions on anything that was not agreed by a broad consensus within the party. Then comes Vinod Kumar Binny and Tina Sharma who seemed to be disgruntled for not getting posts of power, and the ambitious new recruits in other parts of the country who were speaking out of line. The inability of the AAP top leadership in regulating its growth was visible. The party was at the risk of an implosion that would yet again show the world that mass movements are inherently prone to decline after their romantic rise.

The most disappointing aspect was that it failed to materialize The Jan Lokpal Bill, which was the main issue of their political campaign. In February 2014, the AAP tried to introduce a Jan Lokpal Bill in the Delhi Assembly, however, Jung said that tabling the bill without his agreement would be “unconstitutional".This view was supported by Congress and the BJP, and Jung advised the Assembly Speaker not to allow the tabling. When BJP and INC blocked the introduction of the bill, the AAP government resigned. Kejriwal alleged that there was a nexus among Congress, BJP and the industrialist Mukesh Ambani.

The party announced in December 2013 that it intended to contest seats in the Lok Sabha election, 2014, including all those in Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. AAP was thrown out of its dream ride because it’s on a cruise that it has no control over. The party was not ready for power in Delhi, but went for it unprepared and it wanted to expand across the country in a phased manner, but got carried away by the Delhi results and enthusiasm of urban Indians. Now, they have a double burden of meeting the sky-high expectations that they themselves had set in Delhi, and scaling up across India to fight in over 400 Lok Sabha seats. For an urban mass movement of common people, with an organisational history of less than a year, this is unreal and absurdly ambitious.The possibility of AAP coming up with a good result in the 2014 Lok Sabha Elections looks very bleak to me. People have lost faith in them as they have failed to deliver. The internal differences between their own members, corrupt members like Kumar Vishwas and Shazia Ilmi, whimsical decisions and speeches delivered lack of unity and a proper organization has left a grave footprint in the minds of the common people which makes it very difficult for this party to regain the lost position and the common man’s belief in them.

                                                                                                       Anirban Das
                                                                                               M.Sc Media,PG-1