Pehle AAP: The birth and rise of Common Man Party

By Philip Mudartha
Bellevision Media Network

23 January 2014: In the beginning, there was chai paani. It matriculated into karcha paani, and later graduated into tel aur makkan. Before we could wink, small time greasing of palms of officials and politicians turned a demon known as large scale corruption in every sphere of our life; both in private and public affairs.

 

 

 

India Against Corruption

Then a little more than three years ago, private murmurs and public grievances gave birth to India Against Corruption (IAC) led by Anna Hazare.  He was joined by activists like Arvind Kejriwal, Prashant Bhushan, Kiran Bedi, and Santhosh Hedge and many others. This Team Anna organized and coordinated mass protests including hunger strikes in Ram Leela Maidan, Jantar Mantar and other public places in prominent metropolises, chiefly Delhi.

As the central government led by UPA-II coalition introduced Lok Pal Bill, chiefly to deflect criticism and attention from accusations of various scams and scandals its administration was facing, IAC began agitating for Jan Lok Pal. However, both UPA coalition in government and its chief opposition alliance, NDA, managed to fizzle out Jan Lok Pal movement.

Team Anna in Disarray

Having lost team, differences in Team Anna emerged in public. Arvind Kejriwal favored entry into electoral politics by forming a political party, contesting and winning elections and seizing political power to change the laws.  Anna Hazare opposed such direction, He argued in favor of reforming the governing system from the outside. Both had their own band of supporters. Team Anna split vertically, with Prashant Bhushan and Yogesh Yadav walking with Kejriwal, while Kiran Bedi and Santhosh Hegde staying with Anna.

Arvind Kejriwal, with his supporters, formally broke from Team Anna to announce Aam Admi Party (AAP) on 26 November 2012. At the formal launch, Shanti Bhushan, former Central Law Minister, donated 1 crore Rupees to AAP, thus setting the trend of publicly acknowledged donations as source of funding for political purposes. It began a enrolment drive with a meager 10 Rupees as primary membership fees. 

AAP emerges as an unbiased Anti-corruption crusader

AAP spent almost a year, making public accusations of corruption against bigwigs. His first expose was the murky land deals of Robert Vadra, the son-in-law of Congress Party President and UPA-II Chairperson, Sonia Gandhi.  His next expose was the Irrigation Scam of Nitin Gadkari, then BJP President and a former State Minister in Maharashtra in the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance. Scandals and financial irregularities of Reliance Industries and its Chairman, Mukesh Ambani, India’s premier Industrialist House, soon followed.

 

 

Private print and television media, both English and Vernacular satellite channels gave its primetime to AAP and its regular exposes of bigwig wrongdoings, stirring national and international awareness of its existence and positioning as a fearless and unbiased anti-corruption crusader. 

 

AAP contests and emerges as second largest in Delhi legislature

AAP chose Delhi State Assembly Elections as its theater, foregoing any thoughts of contesting in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Mizoram. It contested all 70 seats in Delhi, with little known common men and women candidates, taking on big names in Delhi politics. Kejriwal himself contested against three times Chief Minister and a seasoned but soft-spoken political veteran Sheila Dixit and won handsomely. Buoyed by the metaphorically fitting election symbol, Broom, AAP campaigned hard on literally brooming all corrupt Delhi ministers and politicians into the dust bin. The Delhi voters were unsure and wary of the new infant terrible. In the tri-polar contests, they preferred BJP over AAP by 33% to 30% vote share. They rejected Congress to third position with 25%. But it ensured that the largest single party BJP with 31 seats could not engage in horse-trading. I recall here that BJP had infamously done Operation Lotus after 2008 Karnataka State Assembly Elections to come to power by money power. That, among others, is the foremost contribution to Indian democracy by AAP and its leadership.

AAP rises to barbs and challenges to form minority government

On 28 December 2013, Arvind Kejriwal staked claim to form a minority government. He was aware that he had only 28 elected members and therefore should be naturally sitting on opposition benches. However, the largest member party, refused to form a government. In asking AAP to form government with Congress support, who had 8 MLAs, BJP accused AAP of running scared of governing responsibilities. It accused AAP of making false and unrealistic election promises knowingly that they cannot be fulfilled. AAP sprang a surprise and enacted a public drama of taking outside support from Congress even as exposing BJP in its bid to embarrass AAP for taking the support of its arch-enemy in anti-corruption crusade.

AAP has caught the nation’s imagination

Though BJP and its ally SAD got 32 seats out of 70, their vote share shrank by 3% in 2013 compared to 2008. Congress lost 15%, while BSP lost 9.5%. The 30% that AAP secured came at the expense of all parties, including left, center and right of political spectrum. Thus AAP emerged to a skeptical nation as true alternative to both left-leaning Congress and right-leaning BJP. It has caught the nation’s imagination.  The nation does not care if its secular, if it has an economic policy, if it has any particular ideology, as long as it serves the people to solve issues the ordinarily folks struggle against, mainly the corrupt, unresponsive and arrogant administrative machinery, in the police stations, in the local government offices, in government controlled utilities supply companies, ration shops, banks, cooperatives, you name it.

The common man wants his voice heard and understood

AAP has sensed the common man’s pulse. Hence, it has unleashed a major organizational drive to enroll crores of members. It has attracted big names as members, even as it has upset many BJP aligned corporate honchos and Congress aligned political forces. The caste-based parties such as SP, BSP and many regional parties are rattled too. They have been collectively strategizing on ways and means of stemming the tide against them and discrediting AAP to prevent its rise to national prominence.

In this environment, was it proper for a Delhi phenomenon like AAP to aim at contesting over 300 seats of Lok Sabha elections in May 2014? That question is on minds of most analysts. What do you say? Your say will form the coming part of this story.