All formulae have failed. All ideas have bombed. All tactics have imploded. At the end of the day, voters of Delhi have chosen a leader who morphed to suit the time and the accompanying expectations. Arvind Kejriwal is back, though the bang is a little lighter – with 62 seats in a 70-strong Delhi Assembly, his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is down by five seats. Kejriwal has his power and pride without fail and fall. On 16 February 2020 he will take oath as Chief Minister of Delhi for the third time consecutively.
Although his dominant signature is disruption, the political entrepreneur has morphed himself. Gone is his entry rhetoric of label-mongering. Gone is his allegations-making factory. Gone too is the pretentious moral certification-giving practice. Five years of working with the electorate at an intimate level has given him a new understanding and maturity of changing his narrative to governance from rhetoric.
For an outsider to have come out of nowhere and established himself as a leader and his party as an alternative in less than a decade is noteworthy. That it has a limited resonance, just in Delhi, is no mean feat. Unlike other states that may have a greater heft and influence on national politics, Delhi is a unique city – it is the seat of the Union Government, with all its power and paraphernalia. As a political entrepreneur with political disruption as his tool of engagement, he overcame the dominance of parties at the Centre.
In the 2013 Delhi Assembly elections, the Congress was in power at the Centre. Kejriwal won 28 seats and took oath as Chief Minister on 28 December 2013, with outside support. This victory rode on novelty value and the expectations of a political narrative that would provide an alternative to Congress and BJP. That support gave way in 48 days, when he failed to table the Jan Lokpal Bill in the Assembly.
In the elections that followed in 2015, he was able to garner 67 out of 70 seats – a remarkable feat. This victory stood on the edifice of creative disruption, under which he questioned extant narratives. This time, it was the BJP government at the Centre.
And now, he has repeated his performance. Right under the nose of the Union government that controls the police, working in an area of influence that is limited to schools, hospitals and transport, at a time when the monopoly of the Congress is being replaced by the monopoly of BJP, Kejriwal’s AAP has been able to capture the mindspace of people through on-ground governance and its successful communication.
Freebies in the form of electricity and water have added their magic, reiterating the primacy of entitlements-based politics over empowerment-based economics. While moral arguments to support the former are many, this is the time to power and consolidate wealth creation, an idea that neither BJP, nor Congress, nor AAP is willing to embrace. Kejriwal’s third victory could be the consolidation of more freebies, and we will see them echo across other states.
While Kejriwal’s was a victory foretold, BJP gave a good fight. It pivoted around nationalism and the issue of Shaheen Bagh protests. In the run up to elections, it seemed that BJP would be able to swing the votes in its favour with a high-decibel appeal. There are three reasons why it couldn’t.
First, BJP has become an idea that is synonymous with Modi. Not its cadre, not the workers, not supporters. Just Modi and to some extent Home Minister Amit Shah. In other words, while those driving electoral wars are prominent faces with proven abilities and victories behind them at the national level, there are no generals left for battles in states. This excessive reliance on Modi-Shah duo for all electoral engagements is proving costly for a party that ironically has a disciplined cadre to pick, grow and support new leaders from.
Second, because of the above, the issues the BJP focussed on had nothing to do with the local aspirations of Delhi voters. Who cares about Balakot strikes – crucial and narrative-changing they may be at a national level – in a city where the primary concerns are women’s safety, pollution and traffic jams? Even the regularisation of illegal colonies, an institutionalised party-neutral scam that has been benefiting the organised squatter-builder-broker-municipalities nexus for decades now, couldn’t do much for BJP.
Third, BJP’s governance track record of managing the three Delhi municipalities, the North Delhi Municipal Corporation, the South Delhi Municipal Corporation and the East Delhi Municipal Corporation, has been abysmal. Corruption has been its driving force, inefficiency its governance architecture and non-accountability its citizen-facing signature. All three are led by the BJP. All three have done nothing to change the face of this decaying institution. And all three may pass on to AAP in the next elections in 2022, when India celebrates its 75th year of Independence.
That brings us to the Congress. Gone are the days of Sheila Dikshit, the dynamic and humane face of Delhi who was the city’s chief minister for three terms over 15 years. If we enjoy and are proud of the Delhi Metro today, it is because of the difficult political investment made by Dikshit. A successful leader, a party manager, and the warmest political figure of Delhi, it helped that she was close to Sonia Gandhi and the Congress party held power at the national level.
Along with its fall at the Centre, the Congress is now little more than a faint memory of its powerful past. That fall, rudderless, leaderless and visionless, has trickled down to Delhi. Not only has the party lost all the 66 seats it fought elections for, 63 of its candidates have lost their deposits (that is, they got less than one-sixth of the total votes). Pathetic would be a kind word for this sort of non-performance with no accountability.
Congress is an idea that tells us that howsoever powerful you may be, it takes a moment for the voter to change her mind and reduce that power to dust. BJP has much to learn from the fall of the Congress. The Indian democracy is flourishing in ways that cynics cannot comprehend. The voter may be a silent sufferer in the interim, but push her far enough and she can displace all equilibriums, destroy all plans and change the political narrative.
Over to Kejriwal for the next five years: let the new governance begin.
The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.
Gautam Chikermane is a Vice President at ORF. His areas of research are economics, politics and foreign policy. A Jefferson Fellow (Fall 2001) at the East-West ...
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