What could be the silver-lining, the biggest catch, in
having an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Delhi?
It will be the clinical trial of one of the most
significant political experiments in India where the public, the Aam
Aadmi, the voter, has been in the driving seat.
For ages, in the independent India, we have been discussing the need
of fundamental changes in the Indian politics. But apart from the JP wave and
the failed Janata Party government in the 70s, we do not have much to talk
about.
India has had a political lineage of
similarly oriented (skewed) politicians, irrespective of the party affiliations
because ideology has always been compromised or co-opted by the elitism of the
political corruption of the mainstream political parties.
If Congress is the biggest culprit, as it has been the
dominant political force for the most the period of the independent India,
other parties, too, have, more or less, followed the suit in being in bed with
the corrupt political practices of the human greed, be it so with BJP or the
so-called Third Front parties or the regional offshoots of the mainstream
political parties, mostly from the Janata Party experiment.
Yes, the Left front parties can claim to deserve a separate
benchmarking for them. But then, if they are almost marginalized in the Indian
politics, it is because they could not live up to the ideology that defines the
Leftists. Yes, they cannot said to be politically corrupt but then they have
not been politically correct either.
So, it has been an all-pervasive environment of political
corruption that, with time, has reached to the level of depravity.
And in this atmosphere of political negativity and thus
the widespread frustration, an unexpected outcome has come in the form of AAP’s
brilliant performance in the Delhi
assembly polls.
The party is just one year old political outfit of
apolitical members who have taken the political plunge riding high on the
hugely successful 2011 anti-corruption movement led by Anna Hazare the
epicenter of which was Delhi.
A System cannot be corrected from outside. And it’s good
that many ‘the-person-next-door’ representatives have been elected by the Delhi electorate.
Yes, the doubts associated with Arvind Kejriwal and some
of his associates who form the axis of AAP, remain in the realm of validated
‘ifs and buts’. They need to prove us wrong and they are going to have this opportunity
now.
So, having a ‘failed history’ of alternative political
movements, an AAP government in Delhi
would be an opportunity to see how this one fares, after the failure of the
Janata government led by Morarji Desai.
To see the experiment entering the clinical trial phase
just before the big political show of the Lok Sabha polls of 2014 would demand
clinical precision from AAP while the party tries to fulfill the many
unbelievable promises made to the Delhi
electorate. The positive point for them is the promises are ‘unbelievable’ if
seen from the current standards of politicking. There is always the room for
the alternative outcome.
They do not have time to waste. In fact, they are running
out of time. It is good for Delhi.
It can be good for India.
And it can be brilliant for AAP. If they perform in this make-or-break battle!
The clinical trial for AAP begins tomorrow. We should hope
this political experiment works out.