AAP, Amarinder, and the vote for change....

So what is the electoral state of play in Punjab today with the assembly election fast approaching? On the ground in Punjab it is now becoming increasingly clear that the election is a two-horse race between the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Congress, with the incumbent Akali-BJP alliance now lagging far behind. Also we can be sure that any hope of a fourth front is a non-starter, as Navjot Sidhu and his cohorts have quickly found out. 

There is no need to waste too many words on the Badal Government’s odds of re-election, which are right now close to nil. After ten years of misrule the Badals leave behind a legacy of having overseen a rampant drug epidemic, rural distress leading to farmer suicides in the hundreds, limitless nepotism, crony capitalism, total breakdown of law and order, fiscal bankruptcy, and outright loot. There is now a widespread belief in Punjab that the Badal clan has sucked Punjab dry. Their beleaguered ally the BJP can do nothing but cower in fear of an AAP victory because of the national political implications of such a result. To put it simply, the writing is on the wall for the Badals. 

Amarinder Singh has spent the last six months trying to ward off the wrangling ways of his campaign strategist Prashant Kishor (aka PK), whom the good Captain claims to have invited onboard in the first place. Amarinder seemed distinctly uncomfortable during the plethora of packaged events PK and his team had organised for him through the summer. But now Amarinder seems to have momentarily broken away from PK’s influence and found some of his old fire. The people of Punjab have a very emotional relationship with the erstwhile Maharaja of Patiala, they are willing to forgive him many a fault because of his obvious charm and great reservoir of goodwill that he built after resigning from Parliament and the Congress Party after Operation Bluestar. He is the only reason the Congress is largely shielded from continued voter anger about the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Amarinder is hoping that after a ten-year interregnum the voters will forget the disaster that was his earlier tenure as Chief Minister; the corruption charges and the inaccessibility where mornings started late and the evening’s entertainment began early. If elected this durbar culture will likely return with a vengeance, his family and retainers will surround him and all promises of governance and development will be forgotten. But Amarinder is a fighter and he will campaign hard, no doubt trying to elicit every last drop of emotion and sympathy of this being what he clams is his last election and last stand. 

And finally we come to AAP, who pulled a surprise against the run of play in 2014 by winning four Lok Sabha seats in the Malwa heartland of the state. Since then AAP in Punjab has been trying to put in place a party structure to fully exploit this initial groundswell of support that appeared, almost unbidden. Fortunately, Sanjay Singh, Durgesh Pathak and their top-notch team has been able to put an extensive party organisation into place on the ground over the past eighteen months or so. AAP is also well ahead in candidate selection with over half the candidates already selected and now campaigning in their constituencies. The candidate selection process necessarily led to some upheaval, as was expected, and some departures including the former state convenor who now finds himself all alone in the political wilderness. And then there was the Sidhu drama that began with a bang and then seems to have petered out. After walking out from the BJP and then overplaying his hand with AAP, Sidhu is now busy playing off one camp against the other in the Congress Party. One thing is for sure, you can’t be Awaaz-e-Punjab if you are taking orders from Rahul Gandhi.          

It is important to note that the groundswell of support in Punjab of AAP is only tangentially related to the party’s support in Delhi. In fact many of those who voted for AAP in 2014 make sure to remind visitors that they voted for AAP even when Delhi’s voters failed to do so during the Modi wave and they say this with great pride in their voice. Arvind Kejriwal is the common link for all AAP voters, of course, and the more he takes on Modi in Delhi the more popular he gets in Punjab, where an underdog with a fighting spirit is always admired. So the Modi Government’s strategy to use Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung and Delhi Police in a war of attrition against the Kejriwal Government is totally backfiring on the ground in Punjab. Because of its turbulent recent history there are few states where people are more suspicious of the police and the central government than in Punjab and Modi Government’s ceaseless bullying tactics in Delhi serve as unwelcome reminders to Punjabis of their own state’s past.

This is going to be a ‘change’ election, of that there is little doubt, the only question is what kind of change Punjab’s voters decide to choose. Amarinder is promising a safe version of change, and that is all it is, campaign promises never to be fulfilled once in office, as has been the case so many times in Punjab’s past and witnessed in Amarinder’s own chief ministerial tenure. Or voters can take the more risky choice of real change promised by AAP, likely to be more turbulent but also a genuine departure from the past, a new vision for Punjab divorced from the arguments of the past. 

A new beginning for Punjab is what AAP promises, but that is not enough to cross the finish line. They will need to convince voters that they are safe pair of hands to govern. Delhi Government’s example will provide some assistance in this endeavour. Modi Government’s extra-constitutional war on the Kejriwal Government is an attempt to stop AAP from crossing this final hurdle of acceptability in Punjab. Congress will target AAP’s lack of a chief  ministerial candidate, a vulnerability that AAP has no obvious solution for at the moment. Arvind Kejriwal’s popularity and credibility in the eyes of Punjab voters will be invaluable but the election hinges on whether voters can make the mental leap required to envision AAP’s local leadership as a government-in-waiting. 

AAP has captured the message of hope in the Punjab election, while Amarinder is relying on emotion and false nostalgia. After a lacklustre summer the Congress is resurgent but yet to begin its ticket distribution exercise, which is likely to be fractious due to prevailing tensions between the young guard and veterans, between PK and sitting MLAs, between Rahul and Amarinder, between Bajwa and Amarinder, just to name a few. As of today it is an election for AAP to win or lose, the crowds at campaign events every day speak for themselves. The electorally significant Malwa heartland south of the Satluj is where AAP is strongest, the Doaba region lying between Beas and Satluj is where the Dalits and NRIs have a major influence and AAP is also doing well, but Amritsar-centred and sceptical Majha is a weak area for AAP and a more localised campaign strategy might be the need of the hour. 

There is no room for AAP to be complacent as the decisive phase of the campaign has just begun and there is a fighting Captain obstructing its path to victory.  

    

    

AAP...Forward...

We are an emotional people and never more so then when the subject is politics. But emotions tend to be an impairment when trying to get a clear view of the political landscape. So for the moment let’s cast aside all the angry recriminations of political spokespersons, the media clatter, and social media babble. The question of the hour being: what are the reasons for the recent escalation of hostilities between the Modi Government and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to a level that seems like almost total war? Admittedly, relations have been steadily deteriorating since AAP’s landslide victory in February 2015, but till now Prime Minister Modi was happy to leave the task of tormenting the Delhi Government to Lieutenant-Governor Najeeb Jung with able support from the Delhi Police and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley putting in a guest appearance on occasion. The recent escalation, however, has been of a higher order and intensity, something no one in Lutyens’ Delhi has missed. 

From the moment Arvind Kejriwal launched his quixotic campaign to challenge Narendra Modi for the Varanasi Lok Sabha seat in 2014 the fates of the two man have seemed inextricably linked. The stakes have only risen since then. After all, AAP’s sweeping victory in the 2015 Delhi assembly elections was the first electoral defeat Prime Minister Modi had ever experienced. It was as nasty a campaign as has been seen in recent times and few will forget the sight of union cabinet ministers spreading out across Delhi to try and stop AAP’s guerrilla campaign. In the months since then, LG Najeeb Jung has willingly played proxy for the BJP in its attempt to scuttle AAP’s government, the litany of misdeeds with which we are all familiar. Chief Minister Kejriwal has been pretty vocal about what he thinks of Prime Minister Modi and, if BJP leaders are to be believed, the feelings are mutual. 

With the Congress in retreat and Priyanka Vadra’s apparent entry into a more full-time party role for the Uttar Pradesh election campaign, Rahul Gandhi’s diminishment as a national alternative to Modi continues apace. History tells us that in a durbar there can be only one heir, because when there have been two heirs internal strife is the inevitable result. Such are the dynamics of power. The weakening of Congress has provided AAP opportunities to rise in Punjab, Goa and Gujarat in recent months. The BJP’s grand plan to constrict and destroy AAP within borders of Delhi has largely failed. AAP’s crusade to get to the truth behind PM’s college degrees only heightened tensions between the governments and increased the mutual animosity between the party leaders. 

Recent internal polling done by BJP in select states has startled senior party leaders, especially the rise of AAP in Gujarat, where a defeat for BJP in 2017 would be seen as a personal setback for the PM. Kejriwal’s unequivocal call for the incarcerated firebrand Hardik Patel to be released as well as his impending trip to Gujarat has left the BJP even more jittery. 

Thus we have a rising party on one side and the all powerful ruling party on the other. Naturally the party in power will take every step it can to impede the rise of the challenger. In the case of Narendra Modi we have a Prime Minister who believes in the sledgehammer approach to crushing opponents, as can be seen in his track record in Gujarat.

So, according to senior IB and CBI officers, it seems word recently came down from the PMO asking the agencies why it was that they had files loaded with information on every Chief Minister in the land except for the only one that mattered, Kejriwal. And sure enough in the last week there have been a non-stop series of charges, investigations and cases inflicted on AAP with the most high-profile being the recent arrest of Delhi CM’s Principal Secretary by CBI while the CM was campaigning in Punjab. A direct attempt to target Kejriwal himself. The idea being to pressurise the aide until he breaks and then to turn him against Kejriwal. I will not waste words going into the veracity of the charges, because I’m not a lawyer and frankly it does not matter, everybody knows how the CBI has operated as a tool of the PMO under successive governments and it is even more true under the current regime (in fact, it’s entirely possible during the course of your reading this piece that an AAP leader or MLA could well be charged or arrested for any range of alleged crimes on the basis of a one-line complaint without any corroborating evidence whatsoever, but don’t be overly alarmed because such is everyday life for AAPians in the age of Modi). You’ll hear plenty of headline-making leaks to the media about this and other investigations in the days to come, never to be proven in a court of law because the aim of the entire charade is not judicial but as always electoral. The only thing these desperate strong-arm tactics really reveal is the BJP’s fear of a rising AAP and more importantly fear of the ideas AAP has come to represent in the mind of voters.    

These are the facts so far, and the next six months will be a torrid period for AAP with the Modi Government trying its best to malign the party’s image as corruption-fighters and to malign the aam aadmi-friendly model of governance in Delhi. So what must AAP do to counter this central government-directed campaign against it? With the Badal Govt in Punjab starting to follow suit in recent days and BJP governments in Goa and Gujarat not far behind, AAP needs a new path forward.

It is a given that BJP will do its best repress and malign AAP in the next six months, nothing anybody can do about that, it’s the law of jungle, but AAP can certainly adapt and adjust its strategy to better meet the threat. Since the formation of the AAP Government in Delhi, the acrimonious exit of those two drama queens Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav, and the non-stop war with the central government along with the accompanying media storm, the AAP leadership has understandably been forced to retreat into a bunker mentality just to ensure the party’s survival. That is no longer necessary, the party has survived and prospered, the battle for Delhi is nearing its end and the battle for India is about to begin. It’s safe to come out of the bunker. 

AAP must transform from a guerrilla political organisation, which vanquished the giant, lumbering BJP army in the bylanes Delhi, into a national party that can adapt to the electoral imperatives of larger states. The organisational transformation in Punjab over the last year, spearheaded by AAP’s very own wunderkind Durgesh Pathak and his team, has been nothing short of miraculous. But the national leadership has been somewhat static, and for a party expanding by leaps and bounds at the grass-roots the growth should also be reflected at the top as well by attracting experienced hands. Right now Arvind Kejriwal and his core team have single-handedly taken on the might of the Modi Government, but it’s time to recruit reinforcements to help broaden the campaign fight and spread the burden. There must be space for experienced national and state leaders from other parties with a track record of honest and competent service to be welcomed into the national leadership structure. In the larger war to come AAP will require more generals, and anybody who thinks otherwise is living in a fool’s paradise. As the big tent of the Congress collapses nationally it is imperative that AAP takes its place like it has done on a much smaller scale in Delhi.

Delhi Government, in a very short period, has earned a well-deserved reputation for competence and reforming zeal particularly in the areas of education and health care, a creditable achievement certainly but it is not near enough for AAP to be taken seriously as a national party. In addition to education and health AAP will have to start participating in the national debate on vital subjects that it has only done so sporadically like foreign affairs, national security and finance, with well thought out policy stances. This will require opening up the party to policy experts in these fields, many of whom being retired bureaucrats and establishment-types are naturally suspicious of AAP, and will require some wooing. The good news is that there are many who are willing to help and are just waiting for the right opportunity.

Part of transitioning out of the bunker mentality will require that AAP’s frontline leadership must now take a step back from daily battles as participants in combative press conferences and television debates, which take their toll and leave all participants less worthy in the eyes of the viewer. The reason any political party has spokespersons is to project the party message while insulating the leaders from the daily maelstrom of the media madness so they can preserve their image and concentrate on more important party-building tasks. Younger spokespersons, like the soft-spoken but formidable Atishi Marlena, will be far more effective in dealing with the Sambit Patras of the world and frontline leaders can interject themselves into the media debate as and when it is necessary. Also the tendency to hold daily press conferences about the latest conspiracy theory before checking its veracity or collecting solid evidence must be put an end to as soon as possible, it hurts the party’s credibility and plays right into the criticism that AAP cries wolf without any factual basis. Above all it is lazy politics of little or no electoral benefit and careless accusations may make headlines in the short term but tend to prove counter-productive in the long term. Political parties are not media organisations and nor should they try to be. Politics at its best is about knowing when to exercise restraint as much as it’s about knowing when to act decisively, and the ability to strike a balance between both these instincts is what makes the difference between success and failure. No other party can match AAP in terms of fighting spirit and energy, traits when combined with tactical adroitness and message discipline will likely be unbeatable.               

In politics a party either evolves to changing circumstances or soon meets its end, and you just have to look at the current condition of the Congress Party for proof of this maxim. The Aam Aadmi Party has overcome an unprecedented eighteen months of sustained assault by the combined might of the Sarkari Dilli establishment, media included, on a mission to destroy it. It has been a trial by fire for the party and has emerged battle-hardened. Modi Government can return every bill the Delhi Government passes, can arrest or disqualify every AAP MLA, it can continue to use the CBI and police to trump up charges against Arvind Kejriwal, but they will soon come to realise that the Indian people always root for the underdog who stands up to the powerful for a worthy cause. In that regard this is still very much Mahatma Gandhi’s India. With elections in Punjab, Goa and Gujarat due next year, 2017 could well be the year of AAP.  

Let me conclude by telling a story, quite possibly apocryphal, that is often retold at Lutyens’ Delhi cocktail parties with a mixture of wonder and horror. The story goes that a junior IRS officer put in a request for unpaid long leave from service and was asked by his immediate superior the reason for this unusual request, the young officer replied he wished to give his entire attention and energy to fight and root out the corruption in India’s governing system. Needless to say the request for long leave was not immediately approved, but nor was it denied, and made its way up the chain of command with each succeeding officer passing the request swiftly upward like it was a ticking bomb about to explode on their desk. Finally the request reached the Revenue Secretary in North Block, who was equally clueless about what to do with it and so went to see the Finance Minister, the previous BJP-led government then being in power and the inimitable Jaswant Singh being the incumbent. After Jaswant Singh heard the predicament he laughed out loud and said he was impressed with the young man’s gumption. Jaswant Singh is said to have approved the request for leave on the spot. The young officer’s name, which I’m sure you’ve surmised by now, was Arvind Kejriwal.   

           

The Wire: Donald Trump’s Electoral Campaign is Very Familiar to us Indians...

http://thewire.in/2016/05/22/donald-trumps-electoral-campaign-is-very-familiar-to-us-indians-37784/

DailyO: AAP draws a line in the sand with the media

http://www.dailyo.in/politics/aap-media-arvind-kejriwal-delhi-bjp-modi-yogendra-yadav-prashant-bhushan-kumar-vishwas-dcw/story/1/3691.html

My piece for DailyO on the political aftermath of the Jantar Mantar suicide:

http://www.dailyo.in/politics/krishan-partap-singh-aap-kejriwal-gajendra-singh-aap-rally-farmer-suicide-rajasthan/story/1/3343.html

"Modi's Loss, a Warning to All"--My op-ed piece in the International New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/14/opinion/modis-loss-a-warning-to-all.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

It is time for real change in Delhi—vote for AAP!

A memorable election campaign has drawn to a close and now it us up to the voters of Delhi to make their decision. The no-holds-barred clash between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has held the attention of the entire nation in recent days. As AAP, led by an untiring and unshakeable Arvind Kejriwal, accomplished an almost inconceivable turnaround in the polls, a surprised BJP tried to throw every possible obstacle in its path from the surprise announcement of Kiran Bedi as its chief ministerial-candidate to employing negative campaign tactics at the fag end of the campaign that even shocked many of its own ardent supporters. 

The BJP seemed so intent on stopping AAP and Kejriwal that it chose a CM-candidate solely on her potential ability to neutralise Kejriwal’s appeal but in the process engendered fractious infighting within its Delhi unit. Also, BJP seemed so caught up in a negative diatribe targeting AAP that it could not find the time or inclination to decide on a proper manifesto, instead producing a wishy-washy vision statement that only made headlines for idiotically referring to Delhi’s residents from the Northeast as ‘immigrants’. A Freudian slip, perhaps? 

All is fair in politics, and BJP is free to choose whichever campaign strategy it sees fit, but the spectacle of a galaxy of union cabinet ministers supplanting BJP’s state leaders last week and launching into a daily litany of angry press conferences against AAP will leave a taint not easily removable after the election is over. The Prime Minister’s four rallies were a steady descent into mud-slinging and name-calling that was unbecoming and unworthy of his office. The speeches just added to a growing sense that the PM is getting more and more out of touch in his South Block bubble. Jibes about the 10-lakh pinstriped suit he is said to have worn during the Obama trip are here to stay and getting embedded into his public persona. 

Alongside the influx of BJP central leaders was the rapid diminishment of Kiran Bedi. By the end of this campaign she has been reduced to a forlorn and tragic figure, who melted under the microscopic scrutiny of the campaign trail. Her attempt to tame a rowdy crowd at the Modi rally in Dwarka and then refusal to continue her speech till they quietened down was truly bizarre and showcased her incomprehension of the new world she had chosen to enter with such hype. Her trials and tribulations proving once again that politics is not a spectator sport for amateur enthusiasts. There are no shortcuts to political proficiency. 

I have no idea who will win on February 10 and I don’t trust opinion polls, which are too easily manipulated by media moguls and their political overlords. But in my opinion, partisan though it is, on the ground in Delhi the AAP campaign has dominated this race by starting first, turning back the initial antipathy, then building a feel-good factor, and finally delivering multiple overflowing jansabhas every single day with a laser focus on local issues that affect the daily lives of common people. The BJP campaign did not even get going till the last two weeks of the campaign. Amit Shah’s emphasis on booth and panna pramukhs is all well and good, but they were the last step in his multi-step master plan during the Lok Sabha elections that included a formidable candidate leading the charge and an easy target in the form of a Congress Party weakened by a blizzard of anti-incumbency. The much vaunted organisational prowess of the RSS is also largely restricted to preaching to the converted and increasing turnout among the faithful. Here too they will find that AAP volunteers have covered the same ground before them and repeatedly so. By now Amit Shah must be nostalgic for the Congress as an electoral adversary. You definitely don’t hear him repeat his favourite campaign line about a Congress-mukt Bharat nowadays. He is caught in an electoral battle where his party’s natural advantages have been undone by the unique political typography of Delhi and an adversary who is perfectly adapted to local conditions. Simply put, Amit Shah has insisted on trying to fight a tank battle in an urban warfare setting. The result has been ugly and the BJP’s scorched-earth campaign strategy will have implications for the Modi Government, irrespective of the electoral outcome. 

To conclude, AAP has a leader who has proven his mettle, flanked by a solid and competent team, and they have a comprehensive agenda for Delhi’s future as can be seen in AAP’s manifesto. The BJP has a discombobulated CM-candidate, a fractious and dispirited state party which was shunted aside by central leaders during the campaign, and no governance plan other than more ill-defined promises in the form of a PR blitz costing unquantifiable crores. BJP is desperate to win this election so that the PM does not lose face this soon after the general election, local issues come a distant second on their list of priorities. The people of this great city deserve better. It is time for real change in Delhi—vote for AAP and let’s step into a better future together.