Hail The Great Pretender!

Hail The Great Pretender!

The phenomenon AAP forming its government in Delhi  now, is being increasingly referred to as the ‘ B Team of the Congress Party’. While Mr. Kejriwal and friends are definitely in the fray for themselves using the aam aadmi as cloak to their daggers, there is something cynically and ruthlessly Stalinist about their ways.

And the Congress Party is equally determined to use the AAP to serve its own purposes. This has been called a ‘marriage of convenience’ between arch-opportunists. Who will best whom, the over a century- old Congress Party or the less than a year-old AAP? And how soon? It reminds one of Mr. and Mrs. Smith, the Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie starrer, in which both husband and wife were professional assassins, with a supari each to kill the other.

The Magsaysay winner under reference and cohorts, are ever more audacious and theatrical in their amorality compared to the conventional political parties they claim to despise whenever the mood takes them.  The corruption and murky funding in AAP, rumoured  now, will probably follow the well-travelled route of political and NGO activity in this country as the wagon progresses.

With astonishing speed, matching its rise to prominence, the AAP may be on its way to becoming just another political party, long on rhetoric and short on delivery. The honesty yearning public who voted for the AAP will have, once again, to probably look elsewhere. It has happened before with the JP Movement, The VP Singh difference, the Janata Dal experiment etc. and will, no doubt happen again. This kind of political eruption comes about whenever there is popular anger against the incumbent government. AAP just happened to catch a big wave of discontent to raise itself up into power.

But for a viable difference, this country needs Growth like oxygen for its very survival. The public needs to discern between its fascination with political posturing and tamasha, and turn its gaze. It needs to tilt towards the Narendra Modi led BJP, which at least promises growth as the engine of progress. And the BJP indeed has a track record on delivering growth, both in the States it rules, and the Centre when it was in power under AB Vajpayee.  

This country desperately needs a growth rate of 9% per annum, essential if this country is not to go under, pulled down by the rising tide of people below the laughably low poverty line. It won’t be easy to double the growth rate in a hurry, but this is essentially what India needs, in order to  address most of its ills. In fact it needs 9% GDP growth for two decades in a row like China has demonstrated  from the 1980s onwards. Business, Industry, Infrastructure are all at a near standstill because of prolonged policy drift. The India story, all but over now, needs to be resuscitated urgently.

But apart from the skullduggery, the bad- faith and outright lies, and the general protesting too much, the AAP resembles the Congress to an uncanny degree. There is  its total disregard for the economy except for a desire to reduce electricity and water prices. In economic philosophy, the AAP is blatantly populist, illustrated by a whole number of wild promises that they are being tasked to deliver on now. But for populists, least concerned about the impact on the economy, arranging for largesse and poor people pleasing measures may seem like mere administrative decisions. 

Likewise, the Congress Party has been on a wild spending spree on welfarism with all spigots gushing concern for the poor. But note that most of it has come in the months leading up to the assembly and general elections. Meanwhile, the Indian economy is down on its knees with a growth rate hovering around 4% per annum, down from over 8% when UPA took over in 2004.

The AAP also goes on endlessly about corruption while taking the support of the most corrupt government ever in the history of this country, to set itself up in office! It swears that it will pass the Janlokpal Bill on priority but to what purpose? Will it probe the CWG corruption as a first order of batting?

Of course, it wouldn’t last a moment if it begins to do any such thing. The coming days will nevertheless demand that the AAP continues to pull one rabbit out of its paper caps after another. This, even as the Congress has moved, over the 10 odd days taken while AAP conducted its referendums on whether to form government, from ‘unconditional’ support, to ‘performance’ based ‘conditional’ support, that too on a ‘time-table’!

The AAP plans to control the Congress propensity to bring down its government in Delhi with frequent mass- contact programmes. But biting the very ‘hand’ that feeds is a difficult proposition at the best of times.

This AAP style - amplified by 24x7 TV News, the Press, an Internet based Social Media, is indeed a new tactic, not tried in quite this manner since Athenian times. It is something other political parties must find ways and means to counter, by conducting more constituency level programmes themselves, addressed by senior politicians too.

But with the general elections coming up shortly, and the model code of conduct kicking in within a couple of months, the AAP may find its human and financial resources stretched. There is also the psychological strain of sustaining the split- frame of needing to sleep with your purported enemy in Delhi. Having compromised its ethics early on by teaming up with Congress, the AAP may have no choice but to ally itself with Congress as the price of its survival, for the general elections also.

At least, many in the voting public are likely to think so, irrespective of what the AAP now, and in the future, says. The surprise factor may be lost, but Congress unpopularity can be transmuted into AAP popularity instead. So, this local/state reality may be comandeered to serve at the national level too.  There could also be a lot of funding and promise in it for the AAP as the Congress B Team.

The warpage of democracy into such mutations is a consequence of fractured electoral verdicts bringing forth the compulsions of coalition politics. As long as the voting public refuses to vote decisively for one side or the other, there is every chance of policy paralysis and horse- trading becoming the norm of governance.  But who does this serve, apart from the elected representatives  that are tempted to be bought and sold to make up the numbers?

(1,093 words)

December 24^th, 2013

Gautam Mukherjee