AAP Has Come: aap ne bulaya kis liye
By Willy
02 January, 2014
Countercurrents.org
The recent state election results in central and north India show an interesting and dangerous trend emerging. Leave aside Delhi for a while, we see a consolidation of bi-polar politics with Congress and BJP on the two poles. The complete sweep of BJP in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh and a majority in Chhattisgarh – significant loss to other parties like the BSP.
With Narendra Modi heading the BJP campaign for the 2014 parliament elections, this meant that bipolarism would be complete – thanks to has fascist ideology and the 2002 Gujarat pogrom. All secular parties would be hijacked to support the so-called 'secular' camp led by Congress – whose secular credentials during the last 10 years in power are all in the open. Be it's actions or inactions in Kandhamal or Mangalore or Muzzaffarnagar or Hindutva-terrorist groups, the secularists are forced to back this unsecular Congress pole to save the country from fascist Modi.
And on the ground, movements all over India resisting nuclear power plants, mining, landgrabs, corporate loot – people are sick of both these poles as both mean more plunder and loot of peoples resources, livelihoods and lives.
But Delhi for the first time has something new to offer. The phenomenal success of AAM AADMI PARTY (AAP) wiping out the Congress and eating into the votes of BJP is a party-spoiler for bipolarism. AAP came out of the mass movement for Lokpal Act to curb corruption in government. With Anna Hazare as the masqot, the entire agitation was masterminded by Arvind Kejriwal and his colleagues in Parivartan – a campaign group which had worked on RTI and halted the Delhi Government and World Bank's attempt to privatise water. The agitation was meticulously planned with media commitments – as they had good relations with the media and had done it earlier on RTI.
Surprisingly, the agitation caught peoples imagination – especially youth across the country and NRIs and spread like wildfire. Forced by the politicians of all colours to use the parliamentary path to get Lokpal Act, the AAP was born. Transparently funded by individuals aspiring for a clean government in Delhi and India, crores of rupees were mobilised. No corporate fund was accepted. Thousands of students from IITs and Delhi colleges campaigned for the party, including door-to-door campaigns. There were hundreds of volunteers, including professionals in various disciplines, who came from different parts of India and the world to work for one to six months. All social networks like facebook, twitter etc were skillfully used.
All efforts of these youngsters bore fruits. People were given an alternative – Modi's so-called magic wand was broomed away by the youth. Even Chief Minister Sheila Dixit was badly defeated. This sudden catapultion of a new party to near-power surprised everyone. No wonder, despite being an atheist, Arvind thanked God in his speech after the Chief Ministership swearing ceremony - "This victory is not because of us, it is a miracle, and I thank 'Bhagwan, Ishwar and Allah', He further honestly shared - "This victory is really a miracle, we could not even have thought two years back such a revolution would come that we would be able to uproot the corrupt parties and real democracy would be established."
Analysts are totally confused with this phenomena. They first try to strike parallels with the JP movement. They forget that 70% of the campaigners in that movement came from the RSS, with (Narendrabhai) Modi heading it in Gujarat. They then strike parallels with Lallu using the JP movement to jump into power. But they again forget that Lallu was a very localised Bihar phenomena, unlike AAP which has supporters from Kashmir to Kanyakumari to Washington.
Others keep harping that this party lacks ideology. Excepting BJP – in some percentages on it's Hindutva ideology, today how does ideology matter in Indian parliamentary politics committed to a capitalist model of development? How can one explain: CPM's debacle on landgrab despite it's good understanding of neo-liberal capitalism and Trinamool's opposition to landgrab despite any ideology, or BJD love for POSCO and the corporates or Jayalalitha's such great hunger for nuclear power that justified slapping sedition cases on over 7000 Tamilians?
So far AAP has fared far better – it stands opposed to corruption, it wants transparency in government, it wants daily active involvement of citizen's in running the country, it wants elected representatives to serve and rule, it wants to end privatisation of basic services, it wants to stop shady landgrab, etc, etc. They have had the guts to take the risk of hitting out at Reliance, Robert Vadra, Nitin Gadkari by exposing their corrupt deals in public.
Watch out 2014 national elections, the ground has been prepared by AAP. They are here to put a spanner in the bi-polar joke being played on the Indian citizens for long by the Congress and BJP. The communal-secular cards will blow off. Don't be surprised if AAP takes strong positions on other issues plaguing the nation like nuclear power, mining, land displacement and Armed forces special powers. The reality is that today an overwhelming majority of Indian voters are youth and they are angry with this corrupt system and they want a government of youth. AAP has arrived and is here to stay, other parties need not shed crocodile tears now - aap ne bulaya kis liye!
Wilfred Dcosta is a activist with Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF), based in Delhi as well as the international convenor of Jubilee South- Asia Pacific Movement on Debt & Development.
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