Revival Of The Socialist Legitimate

Revival of the Socialist Legitimate

A strange phenomenon is hovering on the near horizon. An upstart of a rag-tag band, of  roughly assembled misfits, calling itself a political party, its name purloined from erstwhile Rahul Gandhi- speak; is about to feast off the bones of the Congress and the over- ambitious BSP, which too once wanted to garnish its provincial DNA from Uttar Pradesh.

The Delhi Assembly elections, due to take place on the 7^th ,could well throw up a David vanquishes Goliath verdict. The David may be precocious, populist, and dictatorial at the same time, but is, as  things stand, evidently on a winning streak. 

The citizens of Delhi could be waking up on the 10^th of February 2015,to the prospect of an AAP Government. It could be a paanch saal Kejriwal  predicament, replete  with a simple majority on its own; if the current Opinion Polls, all saying so, are to be trusted.

The AAP has allegedly gained a startling momentum and hard to believe stature, quite suddenly, in a sleeper action, before anyone could properly figure out why.

And this, over just the last fortnight of campaigning. It is, as if, the harder BJP tried to win, the stronger AAP became, almost in direct and inverse proportion.

Of course, the polls could be wrong, and even cynically motivated. This more so because the erstwhile powers that were, can see themselves sinking like a stone.  But, most analysts agree that the AAP holds a strong, even magnetic appeal, for the incipient Socialist, longing for the welfare politics of the Congress, the migrant poor- eking out a living on the margins of this city-state; and the masses of BJP-rejecting people from the minorities.

All these folk, many of whom live cheek by jowl in warrens and juggi/jhompri clusters; and their dogmatic Leftist intellectual cousins, many firmly middle class, think they have found a saviour in Arvind Kejriwal, AAP’s highly articulate convenor and CM candidate.

This angry bunch, constituting as many as 60% of the registered voters, have watched the BJP win and rule the roost over these last few months,  but with increasing distaste; this  not only for Modi and his triumphalist Government, but also the fringe Hindutva elements  and their antediluvian antics.

They want to roll back the Modi Wave, and think they have found the perfect broom to achieve the striking of a first blow.A feisty set of extremely ordinary people that make up the AAP leadership, have been building up a most unlikely and wildly populist challenge to the Modi/Shah juggernaut. A juggernaut that has been either sweeping, or dominating, all the state assembly polls so far, ever since its spectacular win at the Centre last May.

But if the almost amateurish and hardly two-year-old AAP, wins a majority in Delhi, that too on its own, it has to be acknowledged as quite an achievement. It would have done so, after all, with comparatively meagre resources, an organisation riddled with defections, a contradictory and confused pitch, and dubious, doubtful, shrill, holier-than-thou morals. And it would have won, even after it lost badly in the Lok Sabha elections of 2014, and made a mess of its 49 day rule in Delhi in 2013, before that. And yet, astoundingly, here they might be!

AAP’s victory, if that is what happens when the results come on the 10^th, will breathe fresh life into the nation-wide Opposition, fragmented into many entities, reduced to pieces, all reeling from their electoral losses, that have heretofore pushed  them firmly into the margins.  

It will seem like the beginning of the end of the Modi Wave, a new wheel in time, apart from that which seems to have gripped the country over the last year or so.

Delhi is only a quasi-state as yet, though Kejriwal and cohorts, dharnabaazes extraordinaire, will not let it rest. But being the capital of the nation, it enjoys disproportionate significance. And it matters who is ostensibly running it.

Kejriwal will not be able to bully Prime Minister Modi, but it is enough that he can go to Punjab and bully BJP’s ally SAD - about its track record on drug-trafficking and consumption. It is also expected to win in Punjab as a follow on, if it wins in Delhi.

Many others will rally behind the AAP. The Congress perhaps already has, along with other more or less Leftist parties. These include the SP, BSP, JD(U) and Lalu Prasad’s JLD. The merger in process of many of these UP and Bihar based parties, anticipating  assembly elections of their own, may well be thrown over, in favour of a looser coalition that could coordinate poll strategy.

A merger, on the anvil, is problematic, because of too many generals and not enough lieutenants. Also, because most regional parties are essentially closed- end family concerns, and cannot indulge in any inner party democracy beyond a point.

But Kejriwal and the AAP will grow in stature in the midst of all this, for being honest to goodness Giant Killers. So, unless the entire prognosis goes horribly wrong for AAP on election- day 7^th February, the Party is on track for a spectacular ascendancy.

In some ways, this election is already being called before it has taken place. But this kind of cocksureness is normally the stage-setting for spectacular upsets. If that happens, Arvind Kejriwal and friends will still sit in the Opposition benches, where they can be as vociferous as they like and probably end up doing some good, after all.

Congress, which has been practically written off, must truly prove to be supine, for this scheme to work. A little bit of a showing could have it cutting into the AAP vote, thereby benefitting BJP.

But if AAP forms the Delhi Government, and sits on the Treasury Benches in the Vidhan Sabha, what will it portend? A touch of Mamata Banerjee’s TMC will infest the air of Delhi perhaps. The underclasses will be melded into a political weapon, and there will be a demand for full statehood and control over the Delhi Police.

This will not be granted by the Modi Government, and so, there will be unrest. The populist redemptions will bankrupt the erstwhile prosperous city-state. Development works will have to be given short shrift.  

In the end, Arvind Kejriwal and friends will learn from experience that a quasi-state that lives on an allowance plus modest revenues that it can raise for itself, cannot get very far by being hostile to the Central Government that sits atop it. And if  AAP loses, it will gradually die on the vine, and take the dream of socialism reviving with it to the ether.

For: The Pioneer

(1,104 words)

3^rd February, 2015

Gautam Mukherjee