The spectacular electoral debut of the Aam Aadmi Party in the Delhi state assembly elections two months ago, culminating in AAP forming the state government, had aroused great expectations of a new political sunrise covering the entire country. But since then, its oleaginous populism and maladroit initiatives in governance has raised ghosts of the post-Emergency general election of 1977 when the Congress was routed by the Janata Party which was swept into office at the Centre on a tidal wave of popular support. Within three years, the Congress led by Indira Gandhi, who had imposed the nation’s infamous first and thus far only internal Emergency, was back in power in New Delhi.
The bold resolution of AAP, which 16 months ago emerged as a political party out of the Jana Lok Pal (national ombudsman) movement spearheaded by anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare, struck a responsive chord in the capital and beyond and catapulted AAP into power in the Delhi state legislative assembly. Since assuming charge, its initiatives to provide 700 litres of water and 400 units of electricity to every household in Delhi have sparked fears that AAP has route mapped the same old socialist path which ruined the economy and consigned free India to the bottom rungs of every international league table assessing national development.
With each passing day, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the AAP leadership has completely misinterpreted the mandate for firm and rational governance by immersing the new political party into the well-worn groove of subsidies and giveaway politics. This suspicion is heightened by its leader Arvind Kejriwal’s unwarranted Uriah Heep-like statements paying obeisance to the presumed innate wisdom of the general populace.
But the plain — perhaps unpalatable – truth is that ignorant and enfeebled by post-independence India’s dysfunctional education system, apart from a survival instinct, the vast majority of people don’t have the wisdom to see through the cheap here-and-now socialism of Indian politics which is the antithesis of a genuine nation-building programme. The best that can be said of the wisdom of the people is that they know whom they don’t want in seats of government and are ready to give a chance to new political parties and alliances as they did in 1977, 1989, 1991, 1999 and 2004, in the hope of firm and fair governance and leadership.
Yet on each occasion they were betrayed by politicians practicing conventional politics of self-aggrandissement and ruinous freebies and subsidies. Properly interpreted, the vote every time has been for fair, firm and incorruptible leadership — for leaders with knowledge, capability and courage to lead the people in the endeavour of nation-building. It is certainly not a vote for leaders who follow the people.
AAP hasn’t understood this and that’s why the new party is likely to join the flotilla of failed political parties which promised much but flounder in shallows and misery.
Uttar Pradesh’s unending nightmare
Bad days are ahead for the unfortunate people of Uttar Pradesh (UP), India’s most populous (200 million) state. The dreadful communal riots of September in Muzaffarnagar and four adjoining districts which took a toll of 43 lives and displaced over 50,000 people, mainly of the Muslim minority who had to endure the bitter winter chill in squalid refugee camps where over 30 children died of hypothermia, is a sign of things to come in this backward state. A mere 67 percent of the population of the state is literate and all maladies — poverty, ignorance, disease, lawlessness and communal and caste prejudice — which have hindered the socio-economic development of post-independence India are magnified and plainly manifest in Uttar Pradesh.
It’s not as if the people of UP have not attempted to improve their lot. In vain hope of a better socio-economic order over the past six decades, they have voted almost every major political party into power in Lucknow. In 2012, fed up with the excesses and brazen loot of the exchequer by the Bahujan Samaj Party, the people of Uttar Pradesh voted in the Samajwadi Party (SP), a caste-calculus coalition cobbled together by former wrestler Mulayam Singh Yadav, who projected his Australia-educated 36-year-old son Akhilesh as chief minister, with a massive majority in the state legislative assembly. Unfortunately for the suffering people, during the past 18 months the SP government in its new avatar has revealed itself to be the most cruel and avaricious in the post-independence history of the state.
The popular and plausible interpretation of the state government’s neglect and failure to nip the communal riots in the bud is that the SP leadership, which is a champion of the minorities, wanted the state’s Muslim community to discover what would be in store for it if the Samajwadi Party is ousted from office. Simultaneously the other major political parties — BJP, Congress, BSP — are cautious about condemning the riots for fear of alienating the electorally powerful Jat community whose marauding youth were prime movers in the Muzaffarnagar mayhem.
The prolonged horrors which the people of this benighted state have had to endure are rooted in its near-collapsing education system, calculatedly neglected by the political class cutting across party lines. The consequence is that the overwhelming majority of the populace is ill-equipped to claim democratic rights and assert identities beyond caste and community lines. New electoral alternatives focused on education such as the Children First Party of India are emerging, but they are unlikely to get their messages of deliverance and nation-building through deep education reforms across to the ignorant majority. The UP nightmare is likely to be a prolonged experience.
