Delhi polls: Kejriwal a lesson to India’s political class

The 2013 Delhi assembly elections ought to be an eye-opener for India's political class - what with the year-old Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) emerging as the agenda-setter for the politics in the city-state.

Updated on: Jan 5, 2014, 13:39:20 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The 2013 Delhi assembly elections ought to be an eye-opener for India's political class - what with the year-old Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) emerging as the agenda-setter for the politics in the city-state.

AAP-leader-Arvind-Kejriwal-at-Tughlaq-lane-slums-in-New-Delhi-HT-Photo-Sunil-Saxena

The Arvind Kejriwal-led party has decimated the 128-year-old Congress, which ruled Delhi for an uninterrupted 15 years, to a poor third place.

The BJP is headed for a 4-0 win - a clean sweep in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, with an edge in Chhattisgarh and Delhi.

But it's the AAP that has shown what the public wants - change.

The people's mandate has made it clear that they want established political parties to change their ways of functioning, and to become more transparent and open.

Kejriwal rode his party on a strong anti-Sheila Dikshit sentiment - indeed, Dikshit resigned as Delhi chief minister on Sunday - as well as the unholy nexus between the Congress and the BJP.

Many believed that the two rival parties were happy with the Congress heading the city-state government and the BJP ruling the municipal corporation - thereby, both enjoying their respective shares of the capital's pie.

Kejriwal brought out this nexus, also seen in many other states, into the public domain for the first time and exploited it for AAP's ends. His efforts showed dividends on Sunday.

While the Congress in Delhi had anti-incumbency working against it, the BJP also had a silent incumbency of heading the municipal corporation for almost eight years without bringing any change.

In fact, the two parties offered a striking similarity in their model of governance - giving Kejriwal a platform to hit both parties and create an instant rapport with disillusioned voters.

Another advantage for Kejriwal was that his 'campaign' began much earlier than that of the Congress and BJP.

The AAP volunteers had covered all constituencies while India's two biggest parties were still deciding their candidates.

A high-decibel campaign and optimal use of the media to create buzz helped Kejriwal and others from the AAP to deliver an impressive debut.

However, Kejriwal's goal is not Delhi.

He is looking at the 2014 general elections and his party will be fielding candidates for the Lok Sabha polls in Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.

The AAP may not get many MPs, but it has definitely impacted India's reactionary political system.

Meanwhile, the current mood of the Indian public is clearly not favourable to the Congress.

In Rajasthan, where an anti-incumbency vote has anyway been the trend, public sentiment against chief minister Ashok Gehlot has given the BJP a sweeping win.

In Madhya Pradesh, people reposed faith for the third time in chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan - bringing him on par with BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, a three-time Gujarat chief minister.

These assembly elections set the tone for the 2014 general elections - Modi's aggressive campaigning across the country seems to be working.

And it must leave the Congress-led UPA government fretting over its future in 2014.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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