AAP to form govt: Now comes their real test in Delhi

“Providing effective governance is no rocket science.” That’s what Aam Aadmi founder Arvind Kejriwal told ET when congratulated for changing the political discourse in the country. [caption id=“attachment_1298559” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Volunteers of the Aam Aadmi Party in New Delhi during a political rally. Firstpost/Naresh Sharma[/caption] But now that AAP has agreed to form the government in Delhi with Congress support, it will have to put that to test. Providing effective governance might not be rocket science but it will need a special escape velocity to get out of opposition mode, a role that AAP succeeded in spectacularly even before it was ever elected to anything. It is undeniable AAP has shaken up politics as we know it. Even President Pranab Mukherjee commented that “participatory democratic movements like Anna Hazare’s” had added a “new dimension” to India’s democratic structure. Mukherjee went off his prepared text to recall that during the Lokpal movement he had been asked to head a group of ministers for talks with Anna. The old order went this way - people chose their representatives who then made laws and implemented them. That is no longer the only way forward, Mukherjee said. Now activists or NGOs can demand a legislation, “insist that you work to adopt a particular model.” AAP was very successful in articulating that insistence and sticking to its guns. But now it will be the target of other activists/NGOs/_aam aadmi_s who will use its modus operandi to press their demands directly as well. At the end of election day at a press conference at the AAP office, Yogendra Yadav had sounded philosophical talking about how the Aam Aadmi Party had created history because it had opened up the space for an alternative political possibility in India. He said it had shown that elections can be fought with white money where every paisa was accounted for. Yadav sounded more like an idealist than someone gearing up to govern as he thanked the legions of volunteers who had put their day jobs on hold to work. A reporter then asked what AAP would do once those volunteers went back to their day jobs. In effect, that is what AAP in government will have to face now. In the end voters elect a party to do a job. The party cannot expect the voters to do their job for them even via referendum. The people who voted it to power have basically said that it is interested in AAP as government (even with Congress support) not AAP as just as honest opposition. The mandate is one of pragmatism rather than idealism which will be a tricky balancing act for a party whose carefully nurtured public image has always been the other way around. But AAP has made a promising start. Even its statement on Section 377 is an excellent example of a party that is trying to hold on to its principles. The party initially got some flak on social media for being silent on the issue. But the statement when it came was clear and unambiguous. “The Aam Aadmi Party is disappointed with the judgment of the Supreme Court upholding Section 377 on the IPC and reversing the landmark judgment of the Delhi High Court on the subject. The Supreme Court judgement thus criminalizes the personal behaviour of consenting adults. All those who are born with or choose a different sexual orientation would be placed at the mercy of the police. This not only violates the human rights of such individuals, but goes against the liberal values of our Constitution, and the spirit of our times.” At that time it was not clear if AAP would form the government in Delhi. Mukul Kesavan writing in The Telegraph said “For a fledgling political party to take a position like this, given that it will, in all likelihood, face another election in Delhi in six months, is principled in a way that the Congress’s grandstanding in the Last Chance Saloon isn’t.” If homosexuals are indeed a “miniscule fraction” of the population, as the Supreme Court indicated, and their heterosexual supporters an insignificant urban chatterati as the BJP believes, AAP, wrote Kesavan “has stood up for a liberal principle that can only bring it electoral grief.” What’s even more commendable about putting principle before pragmatism is the fact that polls have shown that many AAP voters in Delhi fit a particular profile – Kejriwal for CM, Modi for PM. Given the stance BJP has taken on 377, had AAP gone to those voters for a referendum on that issue the same way it went to them about forming a government, who knows how it would have turned out. In a sense that will be the AAP’s challenge in governance. As the Aam Aadmi Party it has made a big deal about representing the voice of the people, especially the ones who were shut out by the elites of Lutyens Delhi. Its entire campaign was geared towards that with vehicle rallies, padayatras and people-to-people contact instead of the big mega rally. That strategy in governance works fine as long as the principle and the people (as in a majority) are not butting heads. When there is a possibility of conflict, that will be the real test of AAP as a political party.