Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Mufflerman Returns

By Vinod Varshney

Kejri Spell Overwhelms Modi Magic

February 10, 2015 will be marked in the annals of Delhi politics as historic, when a much-maligned and lampooned party won 67 of the 70 seats in the Delhi assembly belying all opinion surveys and exit polls. Delhi voters demonstrated to the world the vigour of Indian democracy when the fledgling Aam Admi Party without much funds or cadre strength trounced its highly resourceful rivals, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party. The AAP called it the victory of a new kind of open politics that should take roots and grow in the coming days. Many observers commented that it was the victory of truth over disgusting and malicious politics to edge out Arvind Kejriwal from the contest that took place in Delhi. The voters by their verdict have also told the BJP that its leaders including prime minister Narendra Modi and the party’s national president Amit Shah need to shed their arrogance, and work in the best interests of the common man.


The Aam Aadmi Party has stunned electoral diviners of all hues again, forcing them to scratch their heads to understand the phenomenon of Arvind Kejriwal and his New Politics, the name given by many observers. The same pundits had written off the fledgling AAP fourteen months ago when most opinion polls had given it no more than  4-5 seats, but it debuted with 28 seats, humiliating the mighty Congress  which could bag only 8 seats, a big climb down from the 43 it had won in 2008. The highly favoured BJP was short of a simple majority despite its control over the MCDs. 
Arvind Kejriwal congratulating party volunteers and supporters at the historic victory of Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi assembly elections. He brought his wife Sunita Kejriwal also in public for the first time.
     All opinion pollsters failed to gauge people’s mood correctly this time also. Most exit polls gave AAP at the most a simple majority or near about that. When one non-descript pollster gave it 53 seats, it was ridiculed for throwing caution to the winds. But the EVMs finally announced that Delhi voters had rewarded AAP with 67 seats out of 70. The BJP’s Modi-Shah-Bedi trio was naturally crestfallen. Mauled and humiliated during the last one year by the new BJP leadership the old guards must be secretly feeling happy. 
    
Soon after the stunning victory of AAP in Delhi prime minister Narendra Modi congratulated its convenor Arvind Kejriwal, who later went to him to ask for Centre’s support for full statehood to Delhi

None except the Sikkim Democratic Front has shown this kind of tsunamic performance in the electoral history of the country. All BJP spokespersons and leaders including Modi had egg on their faces; they had lambasted opinion polls for giving so many seats to the AAP as Bajaaru. Till a few hours before the results came, they had boasted they would form the Delhi government. They made claim on the basis of feedback from party workers returning from constituencies. They indeed had read in the exit polls a short fall of a couple of seats for getting simple majority and had formulated a Plan-B for forming the government. But the BJP won only a measly 3 seats, down from 31 fourteen months ago. What went wrong? Many claim it was a referendum on nine months’ of Modi rule at the Centre. 

The body blow in Delhi was humiliating for the BJP as it had deployed around 12 cabinet ministers, 130 MPs and several chief ministers besides Modi himself for campaigning. The prime minister addressed five rallies, an unprecedented act during the elections of such a small state. In the last leg of the electioneering the party roped in top adman Piyush Pandey of Ogilvy and Mather’s to launch publicity blitzkrieg, attacking Kejriwal’s personal integrity which is his greatest asset and upon which his politics is anchored. Finance minister Arun Jaitley who was in charge of the campaign strategy released an audio-video clip, projecting Kejriwal as a renegade, liar and anarchist.
Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal waving the mammoth crowd which turned up to attend his oath-taking ceremony

The body blow in Delhi was humiliating for the party as it had deployed around 12 cabinet ministers, 130 MPs and several chief ministers besides Modi himself for campaigning. The prime minister addressed five rallies, an unprecedented act during the elections of such a small state. In the last leg of the electioneering the party roped in top adman Piyush Pandey of Ogilvy and Mather’s to launch publicity blitzkrieg, attacking Kejriwal’s personal integrity which is his greatest asset and upon which his politics is anchored. Finance minister Arun Jaitley who was in charge of the campaign strategy released an audio-video clip, projecting Kejriwal as a renegade, liar and anarchist.

Arvind Kejriwal went to meet president of India Pranab Mukherji along with Manish Sisodia, the second in command in the new government
However, a few leaders in the BJP could smell the impending defeat, and stated that the result should not be taken as a referendum on Modi’s rule. But one can recall Modi’s own words during one of the five rallies when he had theatrically thundered, ‘Bhaiyo aur Behano! It is not an election about who would form the government, but this election will decide how the world perceives India. Delhi is the country's identity and every event that happens in Delhi impacts our image worldwide.’ And truly, foreign media including CNN, BBC, Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Telegraph, and Economist among many others across the world covered it in extenso. The New York Times wrote: ‘Modi’s loss was more fundamental and his honeymoon with India’s voters had ended. Kejriwal managed to outmaneuver Modi on multiple levels, not only projecting himself as the true agent of change but also as a man from humble circumstances. London’s The Telegraph termed BJP’s defeat as ‘humiliating landslide’ while The Guardian described it as a ‘blow to Modi’.

Governance: Kejriwal will only oversee

In yet one more surprising move chief minister Kejriwal has not kept any portfolio with him. He will only monitor the work of ministers and MLAs. He may pay more attention to ensure contacts with people and work out a systemic change to deliver good governance using technology and make things more transparent. A second surprise came as a shock when he did not include any woman in his cabinet.
It seems he has put emphasis this time more on experience and maturity so that he can deliver on the promises made in the AAP manifesto. Yet another novel feature was making Manish Sisodia the deputy chief minister which has been applauded as a thoughtful move. This would free him to devote more time to expand and strengthen the party in other parts of the country although while addressing the mammoth crowd at Ramlila Maidan he hinted that he would focus on Delhi only for next five years. 
The cabinet: Sandeep Kumar, Satyendra Kumar Jain, Manish Sisodia,
Arvind Kejriwal,
Jitender Singh Tomar, Asim Ahmed Khan and Gopal Rai.

     The oath-taking ceremony of Arvind Kejriwal and his six cabinet colleagues was a high-voltage affair attended by more than 60,000 people, most of them wearing the AAP cap creating the impression of a wavy white sea. They had come from all nooks and corners of the country, some even from abroad.
     Kejriwal’s address was full of political messages—the most prominent of which was that Aam Aadmi Party might not rush to contest elections in other states as this would be interpreted as arrogance. He cautioned party workers never to become a victim of this mental vice even in the heady feeling of their spectacular victory. He mentioned in this context the complaint from a doctor that some people wearing AAP cap had created a ruckus in his hospital. He said any person wearing such a cap could not be an AAP worker; he urged the police to take especially strong action against whosoever wearing an AAP cap tries to throw his or her weight around.

Kejriwal made a firm commitment amidst loud applause that within five years Delhi would be a corruption-free state. He criticised the communal politics without naming the BJP and expressed his deep sense of concern about the vandalisation of churches and attempts to foment communal riots—things which had not happened during the last 35 years. He assured that his government would do its utmost to check politics of this nature in Delhi. ‘We will change the politics of communal hatred into politics of love and affinity,’ he said. With help of the police we would transform Delhi into a place where people of all religions could feel safe and secure, he added.
 

Kejriwal urged the Centre to give constructive support to his government. He mentioned his meeting with prime minister Modi when he raised the issue of full statehood to Delhi. He reminded the PM that the BJP during the last 15 years had been raising this demand in all its manifestos, including the one it released just before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

Kejriwal’s address showed that he had mellowed a lot since his political debut about a year ago. He said he would consider the three BJP MLAs also as part of his own team as everybody’s help was needed for making Delhi a better place to live. He deprecated the efforts made by some candidates to analyse the booth-level vote pattern.      

Resource crunch might prove a major problem for Kejriwal in fulfilling his election promises. Reflecting on this aspect he urged traders to pay taxes voluntarily and said whatever amount accrued would be used for the citizens’ own benefit and welfare. He would not allow any leakage of the government funds. Calling Kiran Bedi his sister, he said he would take her guidance from time to time. ‘Congress leader Ajay Maken also would be consulted in formulating policies’, he said. 
    
Opposition parties in India defined the outcome as Modi’s defeat; so much so even the non-political Anna Hazare and Uddhav Thackeray, chief of Shiv Sena, BJP’s partner in Maharashtra government also said so. Political pundits claim that the Delhi poll result is a boost to the sagging morale of opposition parties which were feeling helpless, not  knowing how to stop the BJP juggernaut.    
    
Initially, many in the BJP, especially in the upper middle class of Delhi had assumed that AAP days were over after it lost all seven Lok Sabha seats nine months ago. Mukesh Ambani had even declared that the party was ‘on the verge of being extinct’. Not surprisingly the Congress and the BJP ran a shrill negative propaganda against Kejriwal on how he ran away from shouldering responsibility as the chief minister of Delhi. The Congress published a booklet listing 25 u-turns of Arvind Kejriwal. The BJP started asking five questions daily. PM Modi accused him of betraying the trust of Delhi electorate. Not just this: he was branded as a ‘master liar’, who did not fulfill any of the promises he had made to the people of Delhi. He called him a Naxalite worth living in forests where he should go. Social media’s campaign against him had been vituperative and even vulgar.

Many factors helped the AAP to score the spectacular win. The most prominent among them were, early start of the campaigning, a clear strategy and establishing direct connect with the voters. The AAP leaders utilised the time to explain to voters the circumstances under which they were forced to fold up the previous government prematurely. They also organised several ‘dialogues with the people’ to know what their actual expectations were.
    
Kejriwal’s 49-day rule was ridiculed as the botched up job of an anarchist who as chief minister enjoyed staging a dharna on the streets of Delhi with his cabinet colleagues rather than running the government. Nirmala Sitharaman, minister of state for commerce and industry in the Modi government even called him ‘a thief’. A few others called him a ‘monkey’. Media, especially electronic media helped in building up a negative image of him. Only during the last phase of the recent electioneering did a few channels try to balance their coverage by showing Kejriwal’s point by point reply to Modi’s accusations. The AAP countered each and every charge positively and earned voters’ empathy. Social media team of the BJP continued to indulge in negative campaigning in filthy language but the AAP team which was by much thinner in size responded positively in sober and decent language.

Congress’s complete rout surprised none

Since the very beginning it was clear that the Congress would lose, lose heavily. Rather, it could lose even the residual support it had initially. Interestingly the Congress and BJP spared each other while campaigning; instead both of them directed their barbs to the AAP. For the BJP it might have been a good strategy, as it wanted the Congress to regain some lost ground at the cost of the AAP. The last election result had shown that AAP had cornered much of the Congress’
Rahul Gandhi’s road show drew massive crowd, but Congress party failed to convert the surge into votes. The Congress could not win a single seat in this assembly election. (PTI photo)

traditional vote banks, especially Dalits and Muslims who together constituted well above 30 percent of the state’s population. The Congress stood no chance of getting back this support this time as these people, including other lower sections saw clearly that the BJP could be defeated only by the AAP, and giving vote to the Congress would only help the BJP. This apart, the Congress continued to be a divided house. Even projecting Ajay Makan as the chief ministerial  candidate proved to be a self-goal: it turned the party into two groups—one led by  Makan and the other by Arvinder Singh Lovely, who wanted to be nominated in Maken’s  place. On being left out of the race, Lovely even declined to contest the poll which further de-motivated grass-root level Congress workers. People turned out in large numbers during the road show of Rahul Gandhi, but they did not see any merit in voting for the Congress in the current political situation in Delhi. Rahul’s jibe at Modi for  wearing the Rs-10 lakh worth foreign made suit while giving the ‘Make in India’ call went viral, and made many neutral voters turn against the BJP while prompting not strong enough to vote Congress. The result is that the Congress vote share came down further to the abysmal level of 9.7 percent of the total votes cast. In the Lok Sabha elections it had secured 15.1 percent, in the 2013 assembly elections 24.55 percent and in the 2008 assembly elections 40.31 percent.

It was a severe blow to the AAP when former union cabinet minister Shanti Bhushan assailed Kejriwal for giving many tickets to people who came from other parties just before the elections, and praised the BJP for its ‘master stroke’ in announcing Kiran Bedi as its chief ministerial candidate. Bedi had joined the BJP just before the poll.  Popular face of the AAP earlier, Shazia Ilmi also did the same.

What helped AAP in scoring a record?

Many factors helped the AAP to score the spectacular win. The most prominent among them were, early start of the campaigning, a clear strategy and establishing direct connect with the voters. The AAP leaders utilised the time to explain to voters the circumstances under which they were forced to fold up the previous government prematurely. They also organised several ‘dialogues with the people’ to know what their actual expectations were. On the contrary the BJP announced its candidates very late. Besides, initially it wanted to contest the election only in the name of Modi just as it had done in Haryana, Maharashtra and Jharkhand, where the party had succeeded in taking advantage of the Modi wave. But it changed the tactic later on sensing that the ground reality in Delhi was different and paradropped Kiran Bedi, an outsider as its chief ministerial candidate. And last but not the least the support extended to the AAP by parties like JD-U, CPM and Mamata Banerjee’s TMC also helped change the mood of Delhi’s voters. Mamata described the AAP’s victory later as a ‘turning point’ and   attributed the BJP’s rout to its ‘arrogance, hate-speeches  and indulgence in political vendetta’.
AAP’s SK Bagga who defeated BJP’s chief ministerial candidate, a former IPS officer, Kiran Bedi by 2,277 votes

More the BJP was emerging as invincible, the more its arrogance was becoming manifest. Its irrationality showed up in the sacking of top bureaucrats like the foreign secretary and DRDO chief, resort to ordinances even when the concerned matters were not urgent and so on. The BJP’s attitude towards minorities became an issue of concern to all parties. For instance, despite very objectionable comments made by fringe Hindu elements owing allegiance to the RSS and the vitiating atmosphere growing in the country in the wake of re-conversion of minority members to Hinduism, Modi chose to keep an explosive silence! 

Controversy over political funding

By Koomitara 
As was feared by AAP leaders including Kejriwal that some serious allegations might be made against the party a day or two before the elections, a ‘hawala at midnight’ bomb was hurled at it by AVAM, allegedly brought into the picture by the BJP in the last leg of the high voltage campaign, to blast the AAP’s claim of getting only clean funds. The charge received pointed attention when prime minister Modi taunted Kejriwal at a rally two days later: ‘Those who claimed to know details of Swiss bank accounts of others, do nothing about their own party’s account.’ Finance minister Arun Jaitley too made a point to hit out at AAP for compromising the core ethical issue of transparent political funding. Jaitley charged Kejriwal with converting black money into white allegedly through donations of fake companies. However, many termed all this as the handiwork of the ‘Dirty Tricks Department’ of the BJP. Digvijaya Singh of the Congress surprisingly came out in support of the AAP on this issue. Many asked on the social media why these people, who were questioning Rs 2 crore allegedly donated by four fake companies, did not seek the source of several thousand crore the Congress and the BJP collected to contest elections. The AAP has been making public complete details of donations it received on the party’s website. Interestingly, the Delhi Bar Association has made the allegation that BJP’s chief ministerial candidate Kiran Bedi’s NGO, Vision Foundation, had accepted huge funds from the notorious stock broker Harshad Mehta of stock market scam-fame (1992). The allegation against the AAP is that it received donations of Rs 50 lakh each from four bogus companies on April 5, 2014 midnight. But soon came an interesting twist to the sensational story that when Jaskirat Kaur Mann, an Indian citizen living in Canada, who was named by AVAM as one of the conduits of AAP’s fund, sent a defamation notice to its ( AVAM) president Gopal Goyal, charging him of harbouring personal vendetta against the AAP. Kejriwal himself offered to face any investigation by any agency of the central government. He clarified that ‘while receiving donation from a company we ask for PAN number, the company’s registration No and then publish all the details provided to us on our website with the transaction ID’. He accused the Congress and BJP of not disclosing details of 80 percent of donations they received. A plea seeking CBI probe into the issue has been filed in the Delhi High Court. The Central Board of Direct Taxes has issued notices to the AAP, Congress and 50 other entities to provide details of donations they received.

  Again, VHP, Bajrang Dal and others kept on exhorting fellow Hindus to bear more than four offsprings without thinking of what they would have to face if their income remained static or prices continued the upward spiral. Kejriwal adroitly made stringent criticism of such statements by asking how would mothers support and educate so many children when even one or two are a burden in the present circumstances. He also assailed some BJP leaders telling women not to wear jeans, or use mobile phones. On the issue of women’s security he emerged the most credible champion as crime against women in Delhi soared alarmingly after the BJP started ruling Delhi by proxy.
BJP’s chief BJP’s chief ministerial candidate Kiran Bedi with BJP’s Delhi president Satish Upadhyaya

The worst thing happened to AAP when former union cabinet minister Shanti Bhushan assailed Kejriwal for giving so many tickets to people with dubious backgrounds, who came from other parties just before the elections, and praised BJP for announcing Kiran Bedi as its chief ministerial candidate as its ‘master stroke’. Not only Bedi joined BJP, the popular face of AAP Shazia Ilmi also did the same.

 
Kejriwal asked if over a thousand CCTV cameras could be installed within no time for the safety of Barack Obama, why similar measures could not be taken for the security of Delhi women. Talk of Ramzade and Haramzade, Love Jihad, attempt to foment communal tensions in several areas of Delhi, and constant attacks on churches had created disenchantment among the educated middle class who had voted enthusiastically in favour of the BJP during the Lok Sabha elections. Whatever little vacillation the educated youth might have had about whom to support, president Barack Obama’s lecturing about religious intolerance in India removed them. The attempt of the BJP to showcase Obama’s visit during the Republic Day celebration as a great success of the Modi government also did not cut much ice with discerning voters.

During the last eight months people’s perception about the Modi government has changed drastically despite all the talk of speeding up economic reforms and doing wonders on the foreign policy front. In their Jan Sabhas AAP leaders asked people if prices had come down, the answer used to come from the audience—no; have you got Rs 15 lakh in your bank accounts which Modiji had promised within 100 days of coming to power, the answer again was a resounding chorus—no; has corruption come down during these eight months—no; Swachch Bharat Abhiyan is going on, have your lanes become cleaner—again no. For many such questions the crowd’s answer used to be the same each time.

The AAP picked on the BJP politically on its every move. First it made the BJP look like wanting to avoid elections in Delhi by all means. Then it accused the BJP of trying to form a government by horse trading; due to the alertness of political parties, none of BJP’s plans succeeded. To force Modi government to announce elections in Delhi, the AAP even approached the Supreme Court. It was only a couple of days before the court judgment was due that the Centre decided to order elections. The capital saw wall posters all across the city saying ‘this is people’s victory, we forced the BJP to hold elections’.
Only three candidates of BJP could resist AAP’s tsunami—former BJP’s Delhi president Vijender Gupta (from Rohini), Om Prakash Sharma (from Vishwas Nagar) and Jagdish Pradhan (from Mustafabad)

Internal surveys of the BJP reportedly indicated that it might lose the elections. The writing on the wall was clear when the first planned mega rally of Modi flopped as only 40,000 persons turned up despite massive arrangements to bring at least one lakh. The party leadership panicked and imported Kiran Bedi, a fellow traveller of Kejriwal during the famous Anna movement days for Jan Lokpal. Many political observers saw in the move a ploy to safeguard Modi’s reputation, in the event of a likely defeat. The election was indeed fought by the BJP in the name of Modi. The entire capital city had hoardings screaming Aao Chalen Modi ke Sath.



Will the AAP extend its foray into other states?

The speculation is rife: would AAP contest elections in other states too. Many politicos feel that Kejriwal can emerge as a national alternative to both non-BJP, non-Congress. However, it is too early to give any serious consideration to this view. It is true the impact of the stunning AAP victory is being felt across the country, especially among the educated and informed middle class. There may be a subtle move to expand the party base to other parts of the country. A feeble foundation of the AAP was laid during the Lok Sabha elections when without monetary resources or strong organisational back up it contested 432 seats. Not surprisingly it lost all but four seats and got 2.05 percent votes. The party seems to have learnt its lesson from the hasty venture. Early indications are that it would desist from taking electoral plunge in any state any time soon. Its priority seems to be in beefing up its organisation. Even if it enters electoral fray in a state, it would be only after proper preparations. This leads to assume that the AAP would choose to contest elections next in Punjab where it won four parliamentary seats and got 24.4 percent votes against SAD’s 26.3, Congress’ 33.1 and BJP’s 8.7 percent. Though the next immediate election is likely to be in Bihar, the AAP may desist from contesting there. Other forthcoming elections are in Assam, West Bengal, Kerala, and Tamilnadu and later in Uttar Pradesh in the course of the next two years. Yogendra Yadav, a senior AAP leader and ideologue says the AAP will focus more on BJP-ruled states where the Congress had become ineffective as an opposition party. It means the AAP would focus on strengthening the party in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. This prospect worries the Congress immensely. In other states the present political dispensations are able to counter the BJP. This was seen in the September 2014 UP by-poll when the BJP lost eight out of 11 assembly seats to SP or the by-elections in Bihar during the same period when the BJP lost six out of ten assembly seats.

     The induction of  Kiran Bedi, the high profile retired IPS officer and a well-known and respected face in Delhi initially was seen as a BJP’s ‘master stroke’, but soon it was discovered that the move had only created frustration among long standing local leaders of the  party. The BJP had admitted several more opportunists who migrated from other parties, like former Congress minister Krishna Tirath, and gave them tickets. It also admitted former AAP luminary Shazia Ilmi and former AAP legislator Vinod Kumar Binny.      The BJP workers and local leaders were also upset at the style of functioning of  party president Amit Shah who believed only in dictating rather than consulting them. Kiran Bedi’s own behaviour sent the old timers in the BJP fuming and disenchanted. As a last move, the BJP managed to enlist the support of the controversial Dera Sacha Sauda’s rock star religious guru Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, who was touted to have around 20 lakh followers in Delhi, of whom 12 lakhs were voters. This had helped the BJP immensely in the Haryana elections but amidst the strong Kejriwal wave, all these attempts proved of little use. No wonder the AAP’s spokespersons described the Delhi poll outcome as a victory of truth over evil forces.
Prime minister Narendra Modi with BJP’s national president Amit Shah (on the right) and BJP’s Delhi president Satish Upadhyaya (on the left) in the first PM rally at Ramlila Maidan in the wake of Delhi assembly election, which failed to draw expected crowd sending the BJP leaders in a panic mode, which led to import Kiran Bedi in the party as the chief ministerial candidate (PTI photo)

     Initially, the BJP was a clear favourite with surveys predicting around 45 seats to the party. The high estimate was prompted by the fact that it was ahead in 60 out of 70 assembly seats in the Lok Sabha elections, relegating the AAP to a distant number two position. At that time the BJP had secured 46.4 percent of the total votes cast while the AAP got only 32.9 percent. Moreover, the Modi’s charisma appeared undiminished even after a few state elections. But the AAP did real hard work: through half a dozen Delhi Dialogues and several hundred Jan Sabhas, it had succeeded in changing the mood of the people. Kejriwal reminded people of his 49-day rule, saying how he was not allowed to function even for a day as the BJP and the Congress had joined hands to create hurdles and see his government’s fall. People indeed gave their support for the vision of his administration in almost all fields--from electricity and water supplies, to education and health services, in ensuring safety for women, ending corruption, and so on which opposition parties described as empty promises which would never be fulfilled. To attract youth, the AAP promised free WiFi in the entire city.                        
     The BJP put itself in a bad light when it did not release its manifesto. However, it presented a vision document listing a host of promises including creation of jobs, launching of development projects, improving safety standards for women and giving pucca houses to all slum dwellers in the next seven years. The Congress also promised each and everything the AAP promised. But the election result showed that people of Delhi believed only in Kejriwal. It reflected in the drastic reduction of the vote share of the BJP by 14.2 percent since the Lok Sabha elections. Hardcore BJP and RSS supporters continued to back it up. Thanks to them, the BJP vote share did come down by only 1.2 percent compared to the 2013 Assembly elections, which the local leadership had fought with full force.
(Note: The article was first published in the Lokayat magazine: February, 2015)
 

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