The Vision Document of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)1 springs no surprises. It puts down in black and white what its main protagonists have been saying for the last two years. It contains the same unthinking hyperbole, self-righteous condescension, superficial reasoning, loud sloganeering and a good deal of reactionary politics that is sought to be smuggled under a veneer of sympathy for the aam aadmi.
It must be said to the credit of the authors that for once they have acknowledged that there is something like the Constitution of India whose preamble they have quoted with approval. But that should not mislead one into believing that they uphold the basics of the parliamentary democracy or democracy per se. Otherwise they would not have blatantly asserted in the very first section of the document: Hum satta ke kendroko dhvast karke rajnaitik satta seedhe janata ke hathme dene ja rahe hai (After destroying the centres of authority, we are going to hand over power directly to the people). Surely they are aware that the Parliament of India is a supreme centre of political authority under the Constitution. The authors of the document seem to be oblivious of a queer mixture of anarchism and Bonapartism that characterises their statement.
Simplistic Analysis
Their analysis of non-fulfilment of the vision of the preamble of our Constitution is simplistic and misleading. All the evils and shortcomings are attributed to the wholesale inheritance of “colonial laws and structures” by the indigenous rulers who, according to them, have simply substituted the erstwhile foreign exploiters. Leaving aside the half-truth of such a statement, what are the laws and structures that the authors are speaking about? They are concentrating exclusively on non-participatory and indirect features of our legislative and executive structures. It is one thing to argue in favour of more directly representative and participatory structures. It is entirely different to ascribe the “exploitative character” of the system to such features, which is what the authors do. They recommend more participatory legislative and executive structures through a more effective role to the gram sabha, greater accountability of the executives to the people whom they are appointed to serve, introduction of “referendums” and “initiatives” in the legislative process and “recall” of elected representatives. And the appointment of a Lokpal to oversee the executive and root out corruption. This is all fine. There has been a good deal of debate at the popular as well as the expert levels on these issues. This is not the place to enter into a debate on these specific suggestions. Suffice it to say that it is naïve to assume that the exploitative character of the economic system will simply vanish with the introduction of such administrative and legislative devices. Even more naïve is the supposition that the exploitative forces which form the bedrock of the system would not subvert the proposed more representative and participatory devices and simply allow a truly people-centric transformation of the economic system.
But the Vision Document is scrupulously silent on the core issue of the exploitative base of the system. It shies away from suggesting any measures intended to bring about a people-centric transformation of the economic system. Such silence is a blind spot of the Vision Document.
Neglect of Root of Problems
The Vision Document confuses and conflates symptoms with the disease. It talks of a growing divide between the rich and the poor, of the loot of natural resources by big business and politicians, of unemployment, of inflation, and, of course, corruption. Nowhere does it go to the root of the problem which lies in the adoption of the neo-liberal policies by the ruling classes, which include not only the ruling and the main opposition conglomerates of the political parties and big capital (indigenous as well as foreign), but also the affluent and better-off layers of the recently emerged middle class which has benefited from the neo-liberal policies, be they in IT and IT-related sectors, financial services, advertising and marketing, print and electronic media, land and real estate. (These sectors cater to the conspicuous consumption of the neo-rich and their imitators, or the praetorian guard of the higher echelons of the ruling classes.) Is it that a sizeable section of the followers of AAP belong to this section of our society and, therefore, the vision informing the document gets distorted and blurred?
The AAP document looks at the contemporary symptoms. It refuses to see the current situation as a part of a historical process which started long ago. Its concern is short term. Its focus is myopic. And it stops short of any radical analysis or measure.
Take, for example, its position on the issue of reservation for dalits, scheduled tribes and the Other Backward Classes. It is oblivious of the fact that the Constitution recognised special measures such as reservation in the context of longstanding social injustice to which some sections of our society were subjected. The criterion of long-standing social injustice cannot be bracketed with what is loosely described as “economic backwardness” which the document does. Such bracketing has been often the handle used by the opponents of reservations. The Vision Document has adopted this stance. The document also talks about denial of reservation on attainment of economic advance by the beneficiary. The concept of the creamy layer has been part of the reservation system right from the beginning. Why is it that the document repeats this as a new discovery and propounds exclusion on the specious ground that there are some who have somewhat benefited by reservations? Such facile arguments have been used again and again by the “upper” caste opponents of reservation and the document finds itself in agreement with that view. The fact of the matter is that the AAP has openly stood against the concept of reservation for promotions. All in all, it is not difficult to see through the lip service paid by the document to the cause of social justice and realise where the sympathies of the authors lie.
Or look at what the document has to say about education and health. It is not really worried about progressive commoditisation of health and education. The solution it proposes is that the standard of the schools run by municipalities and governments should be brought up to the level of the expensive, privately-run schools. Nowhere has such a dual system and commercialisation of basic human rights led to an upgradation of the worse-off section, which constitutes the major part of service provision. What is necessary is an immediate halt to commoditisation, large-scale expansion of public health services and compulsory institution of a common neighbourhood school system. Such demands have been in the public domain and there are powerful movements supporting them. Why is it that they are not visible to the Vision Document? Is this too due to the class bias of the AAP?
There is a brief paragraph in the Vision Document about the communal issue. It is worded in such a “goody goody” fashion that it ceases to have much meaning in the real political context. All that it says is that one should respect religious diversity and religion should not be turned into a political instrument. This is like apple pie and mother’s milk. The real issue today is that the minority, particularly the Muslim minority, has been largely alienated because of the overt or covert politics of the major political formations. Democratic freedoms and rights of the minority youth, in particular, are being suppressed ruthlessly. In the name of anti-terror action, innocent people are being targeted, tortured and incarcerated for long years. Islamophobia which is part of the US-Israel imperialist strategy has had an unacknowledged impact on our domestic politics as well. Such a situation cannot be remedied by resorting to wishy-washy statements. Because of its reluctance to go beyond the superficial and the obvious, the Vision Document suffers from inexcusable shallowness.
Similarly on the question of the large-scale, ruthless uprooting of adivasis from their land, livelihood and habitat, their fierce resistance to the process and the virtual war proclaimed by the Indian state against them in the name of defending the country against the so-called “security threat number one”, there is hardly anything except the indirect observation that acquisition of mineral and forestlands must have the consent of the local people.
On the Agrarian Question
On the agrarian question, the approach of the Vision Document boils down to two issues, quite important in themselves but again more symptomatic than basic. In essence, it says that land should not be acquired except with the consent of the gram sabha and that farmers should get a fair price which should be 150% of the production cost. Now, land acquisition is only a subset of the bigger set of the land question. One cannot find a solution to the subset without talking about the bigger set. And the gram sabha consent, whether in regard to forest, land, or environment has been manipulated any number of times, despite some apparently good legal provisions to that effect. Moreover, the market has deprived the peasantry of its land on a scale many, many times more than the land acquisition process propelled by governments. Has the document anything to say about this inexorable onslaught of the market? About the fair and remunerative price to farmers there cannot be two opinions. But how does one ensure it in a market that is being integrated with the global agriculture market? More important, do not the authors of the Vision Document know that a very small proportion of our peasantry produces marketable surplus? And that 92% of our peasantry consists of small and marginal peasants for whom farming is largely subsistence farming and clearly an unviable proposition? There are no easy solutions to the land question. In the ultimate analysis, “The question of land is the question of capital”. And one cannot find piecemeal, symptomatic, tokenistic solutions. The question of land or the agrarian question in India today calls for nothing short of a complete overhaul of the mode of production. But this obviously is another blind spot in their vision.
On the question of unemployment, all that the document envisions is a transparent, merit-based appointment to public service posts, provision of bank finance for self-employment in small businesses and, believe it or not, placing the responsibility of finding jobs for the unemployed on the gram panchayats! The jobless growth path that neo-liberal economics prescribes will not get wished away by the simplistic measures suggested in the document. And the growth model based largely on integration with the world economy and larger and larger inflows of capital, footloose or otherwise, is itself facing the prospect of failure. Unless there is a more thorough analysis and willingness to adopt radical measures, there is no possibility of the unemployment problem being tackled successfully. But such thinking is beyond the vision of the document.
A glaring shortcoming of the document is its parochial vision. The vision literally confines itself to a narrow and shallow focus. It speaks of the problems of the Indian polity as if India exists in a self-contained world of its own. Nothing seems to be of concern, if it lies apparently beyond the borders. Indeed it even shies away from many real problems of our own people residing in border states/areas. It is as if not only is there no world outside our borders, but our border areas and people too do not exist.
First, the question of border areas and people. On Kashmir, there is absolutely nothing in the Vision Document. Perhaps, the articulation of an honest but unpalatable position on this issue by a leading protagonist of AAP (known for his courage of conviction) and the quick, violent reaction it generated in the jingoistic, far right circles and the chauvinistic, adverse comments it faced even within the core of the erstwhile India Against Corruption parivar may have something to do with this silence. Perhaps, the crusade against corruption and the installation of participative and direct democracy in the rest of India is far more important to the AAP than the plight of the Kashmiri people. Whatever may be the reason, the parochial character of the Vision Document is difficult to conceal.
In the same vein, the document has little to say about the neo-imperialism of the US-Israel combine, its aggression threatening our borders, the turmoil in the whole of west Asia, and new experiments in more democratic politics being tried in the whole of Latin America. This is not to say that another chapter needs to be added to the document in due course. What is astonishing is that a political party hoping to take the reins of power is mute on the global processes, particularly those advancing the tentacles of neo-imperialism, which are inextricably influencing our politics and our society. Is it just a parochial vision or is it silent endorsement of those processes, which are welcome to the class base of the AAP?
With such complete silence on the basics, the compensation is found in excessive articulation of the trivial. How else can one explain an entire three pages of the 20-page document being devoted to spelling out how the party propaganda will be carried out, how the candidates for elections will be chosen, and how the elected members of the party will live or travel and such like details?
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