For a moment it seemed that India's sprawling tribe of NGO activists, leftie academics, liberal intelligentsia and civil society leaders had found a home in the Aam Aadmi Party. A perch that offered the opportunity to be finally relevant in national politics, rather than stuck in the 'activist' silo -- who were good only for TV talk shows and the op-ed pages. Now as Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav and co. walk off into the sunset of martyrs, it's clear that that moment was brief and that moment is past.
No matter what happens to the political fortunes of what some are snarkily dubbing Arvind Akela Party, AAP's image as the big tent party for big dam protesters, anti-nuclear plant activists, PIL lawyers, old school Gandhians, bankers with a conscience and beauty queens has now been laid to rest.
Long before the Lok Sabha elections, Lord Meghnad Desai had predicted in an interview that "the Aam Aadmi Party will become Congress Mark 2 – non-dynastic, modern, slightly left of centre, bit of Gandhian heritage in the topi and a younger party." But even he might not have predicted it would involve quite such a Great Purge.What had felt like a movement has become just another party. And for the public intellectuals who had rushed into AAP's welcoming embrace, the party is over.
"We have seen such kind of drama in other political parties, but didn't expect this in AAP," said a disappointed Medha Patkar as she quit the party.But it's also amazing that for a moment even the likes of Patkar, the quintessential anti-establishment figure, had found space within the system of mainstream electoral politics.
Yadav and Bhushan after the national council meet. PTI image
Public intellectuals, liberals and leftists have long struggled to find a viable political party that would allow them to engage in the politics of elections and power. The Left parties have been on a downward slide losing even their Bengal bastion. The Congress, long the home for the middle-of-road socialist, is battered by scandal and scams and filled with sycophants and yes-men all forced to pay obeisance to one family as a sort of membership due. The tragedy for many of these civil society activists was they were politically engaged, but ultimately impotent and frustrated because there was no untainted home that could accommodate their ideologies and principles. AAP emerged as a haven for them, a relatively clean slate as long as you ignored the grumpy Gandhian it had left in the dust.
As Mukul Kesavan writes in The Telegraph " (a)fter some initial ambivalence, liberals and leftists were so taken by the success of Kejriwal's populism during the Anna Hazare episode that they converged on the political party born of that single-issue campaign, persuaded that they had found in Kejriwal a shortcut to the People."
Kejriwal however has shown that while he enjoyed the rainbow coalition aura these people brought to his party, he had no illusions about who was the vote-catcher there. Bhushan and Yadav are indeed co-founders of AAP but without Kejriwal there would be no AAP to co-found and Kejriwal knows it and he just spelled it out in no uncertain terms.
"We've come to win, not lose," he told his party. "Those who want to be on the winning side stay with me and the losers can go with them."
AAP was never the Fab Four. The reality was always Kejriwal and the Pips.
The Pips might now bravely squeak about launching another political outfit, but a passionate interest in the political process is not the same as winning elections. They are thoughtful, articulate, erudite which makes them great on television talk shows but has not proven to be a ticket to success in the electoral hurly-burly. Now they are politically homeless again, dependent on the charity of the likes of Ramdas Athawale of the Republican Party of India (A) who has invited them to join his outfit.
The public intellectual and the civil society activist are often figures who find themselves outside the action. They might be critic, commentator and even advisor but their realm is confined to op-eds and television punditry. "AAP began as the revolt of the non-government organisations (NGOs) and civil society - its entire top leadership comes from these two sectors," writes Bharat Bhushan in the Business Standard. "These sections of society have for long occupied the Oppositional space in Indian politics outside of legislative politics."
AAP had given that public intellectual a moment of relevance, of feeling that they could actually be part of shaping a political destiny, not just commenting on it from the outside. AAP could actually practice the accountable governance its civil society leaders long preached to others. As Admiral L. Ramdas, the now ousted Lokpal of the party that made Lokpal a household word, writes in his farewell note:
"It was with a sense of excitement and hope that I became part of this movement to bring a new kind of politics to India. I believed in the ideals of transparency, accountability and fairness that was encapsulated in the institution of the Lokpal."
The events of the last weekend do not mean the leaner and meaner AAP going forward cannot be transparent, accountable or fair but it's not clear it will be bringing a "new kind" of politics to India any more. With Kejriwal firmly in the saddle and having cracked his whip, AAP feels like many other populist parties with one Supreme Leader. The Trinamool Congress comes quickly to mind. AAP has crowned its Dada, instead of being a band of brothers.
It was perhaps inevitable that AAP would crack under the disparate forces of all kinds of civil society activists and public intellectuals that had made the party the repository for their very different ambitions. These were opinionated people with strong convictions rather than loyal foot soldiers and it would be hard for any fledgling party to accommodate them all. While AAP in Delhi had remained mum on 377 in its manifesto, its leaders in Mumbai had inserted their opposition to it in theirs. It was a party speaking in many voices which made for an exciting democratic experiment but did not make for the most well-oiled party machine.
Is there something lost in the exit of Yadav and co? Absolutely. While Yadav can go back to being a very successful psephologist and Bhushan has his law practice, many younger, more starry-eyed followers for whom AAP was their first baptism in politics are suddenly rendered homeless at the moment of their greatest electoral victory. What kind of alternative party with alternative power structures could have emerged with the counsel of those who just got booted out? We'll never know. It might have been an experiment that would fail but it's been aborted even before it could really start.
Kesavan writes "Charismatic leadership in a democracy like India's is best served when it's obscured by the appearance of fellowship and collegiality. Kejriwal has been damaged by the loss of intelligent, well-spoken allies who had the great virtue of not being seen as his creatures."
This might matter only to the chattering classes who read op-eds and not to the majority of those who voted for Kejriwal. But Yadav and Bhushan and their comrades might be looking with a tinge of envy at another public intellectual-turned-politician. Beleaguered as he might be today, with a reputation that's taken a battering, Manmohan Singh actually managed to serve a full decade in office. AAP was the place where Manmohan Singhs should have thrived and blossomed instead of being dependent on the kindness of the Gandhis. The former PM whose government bore the first brunt of the rise of the clean-cut AAP might be excused a moment of schadenfreude today.
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