AAP: Journey from anti-corruption movement to accommodating corrupt politicians

A few days back, newspapers rightly went to town on a bureaucrat couple getting the Thyagaraj stadium in the heart of Delhi emptied of the practising sportspersons to walk their dog. The bureaucrat couple has faced the music: The two have been separated by being sent on punishment postings in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh.

Given his obsession with publicity under any circumstances, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal was quick to announce that the stadium would remain open for practice by sportspersons till late in the evening.

Now would somebody tell Kejriwal why he kept this sports complex shut for days together ahead of Diwali last year for a political event? Kejriwal with his wife and cabinet colleagues had offered prayers at the replica of Ayodhya Ram Mandir built at Thyagaraj Stadium in Delhi.

The event was preceded by the usual publicity blitzkrieg and people were urged to witness the event live. This event was aimed at enticing voters of Uttar Pradesh, which was to go for Assembly polls a few months later, with his Ram bhakti that included free trips to the citizens of Delhi to Ayodhya.

Kejriwal himself had earlier visited Ram Janmabhoomi and Hanumangarhi in Ayodhya to reiterate his Ram bhakti of not being of any lesser degree than that of the BJP leaders. It’s another matter that UP voters could see through this act of devotion and the Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) put up a no show in the polls.

When asked by media persons about the temple replica on a sports ground, the prominent AAP face, Atishi Marlena, gave a very interesting explanation. Born to Marxist parents, both teachers at Delhi University who named her after Communist leaders Marx and Lenin (Marlena), Atishi justified the use of taxpayers’ money as an attempt by the government to celebrate Diwali with the people.

The AAP is a by-product of the Anna Hazare-led 2011 anti-corruption agitation, which created a stir, a political turmoil, leading to the change of two governments in Delhi, one at the Old Secretariat led by Sheila Dikshit and the other at the Raisina Hills headed by Manmohan Singh. It also gave rise to a political party, which is still to firm up its social and ideological base, though it has already tasted power in two states - Delhi and Punjab.

A party which was propelled to power ‘fighting’ for people’s rights, and claimed it to be their ideology, is today best known for splurging people’s money on its publicity drives. Soon after the AAP came to power for the first time in 2013, party’s then leading ideologue Yogendra Yadav was asked about the AAP’s socio-political orientation.

Yadav in his customary, convoluted argument, laced with sweet inanities, had said that the party was oriented towards ‘people’s welfare’ and no ideology could be an impediment in pursuing the agenda of welfarism. Soon after, Yadav, lawyer Prashant Bhushan and other Left-leaning members were ousted from the party, as was Kapil Mishra from the Right.

Daniel Bell, who had described himself as a “socialist in economics, a liberal in politics, and a conservative in culture,” in his 1962 book End of Ideology had predicted that the older, grand-humanistic ideologies derived from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries would be exhausted and that political ideology would become irrelevant among ‘sensible’ people. No wonder those who are left behind in AAP are ‘gold-digging’ politicians, who could not make a show in the traditional parties have now bought their space in the Aam Aadmi Party.

The arrest of prominent AAP leader and Delhi Minister Satyendar Jain by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) amplifies the AAP’s journey from an anti-corruption movement to corrupt governance. On Monday last, ED arrested Delhi Power Minister Jain in a money-laundering case based on a CBI first information report lodged against the AAP leader in 2017 under the Prevention of Corruption Act. He was accused of having laundered money through four companies allegedly linked to him.

Jain is also facing a case in the Delhi High Court for indulging in poll malpractices. The petition filed by Jain’s defeated rival is a dossier on how to misuse government funds and manipulate public opinion through false propaganda. If the petition is upheld, the court may give a watershed judgement on what ails our election process.

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In 2014, following the Arab Springs and similar peoples movements in other countries like the Anna Hazare movement in India, Francis Fukuyama, the author of The End of History and the Last Man, stated that the biggest problem for the democratically elected governments in some countries was not ideological but “their failure to provide the substance of what people want from government: personal security, shared economic growth and the basic public services.”

Building the replica of the Ram Temple at a sports stadium would certainly not stand Fukuyama’s scrutiny of an elected government. It’s probably time for Fukuyama to update his 2014 work, ‘Political Order and Political Decay’ to find how some of these movements have let down their supporters in a big way.

The writer is an author and president, Centre for Reforms, Development & Justice. Views expressed are personal.

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