Aam Aadmi Party Scenario: Just Like Any Old ‘Aam’ Party

Over the past few years, a number of publishers have requested me to write a tell-all book on political developments. Premised on the correct belief that those in the media know far more than they actually reveal in their writings, their expectation is of a book that divulges ‘off the record’ conversations and insider information that form the basis of judgements, but whose details are inevitably left out.

 Having thought over the matter carefully, I have so far refused. The reason is not very complicated. Relationships with politicians and other public figures are built over decades and are based on absolute trust.
A person in positions of importance or with access to information will not speak his/her mind openly unless there is implicit faith that confidentiality will be maintained. 

The kiss-and-tell variant of political coverage (more accurately, spit-and-run) is, to my mind, an act of betrayal. This is not to suggest that these inside stories should never come into the public gaze. They can, but only after contemporary events have become history—which basically means there should be a generous time lag between the culling of ‘off the record’ information and its dissemination.

What is true for the media is also applicable to political activists across the board. This is the principal reason why I am a little uneasy about the sudden arrival of the AAP tapes in the public domain. These tapes are, of course, a great eye-opener for anyone who actually believed that the holier-than-thou approach adopted by AAP leaders also implied there was no dirty linen to be washed in public. But for those who don’t have an absolutist belief in ends justifying the means, there is a need for caution.

Going beyond the gory details, what message has the AAP tapes conveyed?  First, it is absolutely clear that when it comes of inner-party feuding, the AAP culture is not very different from the rest of the political pack. There may be an ideal called ‘alternative politics’, but it clearly does not extend to fraternal feelings with the like-minded. It is now clear that the quest for an AAP victory in Delhi resonated far more with the voters than with those who were proclaimed the leaders of the movement.

 Secondly, the belief that AAP is a movement that went far beyond the personal ambitions of its leaders seems to have been needlessly hyped. It is now clear that a considerable part of the energies of the top AAP leadership was devoted to self-promotion at the cost of someone else. 

Whether it is the group identified with Arvind Kejriwal or the uber holy brigade around Prashant Bhushan, the knives were being sharpened almost immediately after the 2013 Delhi election where AAP made a spectacular debut. What other explanation can there be for phone calls with journalists being recorded and then gleefully filed away for use at an opportune moment? 

Takeover battles, it would seem, were inherent in the DNA of the AAP. Ideology and lofty concerns, while no doubt important in the selling of the party to the wider public, were secondary to the AAP apparatchiks.

Finally, the tapes and the subsequent washing of dirty linen before the cameras clearly show that there is a natural rhythm to electoral politics that cannot be broken by revolutionary poseurs. I, for example, found nothing particularly abnormal in the voice that seems very much like Kejriwal’s, hoping for a Congress breakaway to give him a legislative majority. 

Almost every party in such a predicament would have been keen on enticing the small group that held the balance of power in a fractured legislature. Nor was there anything particularly strange—and however ethically repugnant—about the AAP facilitating some dodgy donations of unknown provenance. In the heat of election campaigns, almost every party does it. And it happens in nearly all the democracies.

The problem begins when the AAP is approached as if it was God’s gift to a morally and ethically devastated India. This wasn’t a realistic approach but it was the perception of a significant section of the chattering classes, not least the wide-eyed reporters in the media, who constituted the unofficial campaigners for the AAP during both the general election of 2014 and the Delhi elections earlier this year. 

To this was added the arrogance of a disoriented intellectual brigade that needed an alternative home after the victory of the BJP and the decimation of the Congress. Together, they made the AAP’s battles seem like a dharmayudh, jihad and crusade all rolled into one.

The real disappointment with the AAP isn’t going to be found in the jhuggi clusters and minority ghettos. The poorer section saw the AAP as a new party that they could identify with, after the Congress shot itself in the foot. Their expectations from the AAP are different from the hallucinatory dreams of the middle class ‘volunteers’ that found excitement in being anti-establishment. For them, the Gods now have feet of clay.

For the moment it would appear that the AAP is imploding. I disagree. Kejriwal has five years to show his worth and it is unlikely that his political fate is going to be affected by the lamentations of either Bhushan or Yadav. Yet, the slugfest of the topi brigade does serve a useful purpose. 

The party has finally come to terms with the grim realities of Indian politics and Indian character. Amid the tears, despair and shrill accusations, we are seeing the evolution of the AAP as another left-of-centre political party with a regional base—a normal political party made up of humans, not Gods.