What Modi govt is doing to Arvind Kejriwal is wrong. But would there ever have been a Modi govt if Kejriwal and his India Against Corruption movement had not destroyed the UPA?
There are very few ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers in politics. Let’s take the whole Aam Admi Party mess that has unfolded over the last week. If you were to ask me, “Do you think Arvind Kejriwal had it coming?” I would want to say ‘yes’, but I would also add that I feel sad about the current condition of AAP, so I am not gloating.
Or if you were to ask, “Do you think that what is happening in AAP is a national tragedy?” I would want to say yes to that, too. But I would hesitate because I suspect that recent events were inevitable given the DNA of AAP.
So, my feelings (and the feelings of many others, I imagine) are complicated. It’s not hard to see why I am saddened by the AAP meltdown. India needs a strong opposition, and every time an opposition party teeters on the edge of collapse, it is Indian democracy that is the real loser.
We live in an era where politics is about money, about prosecutions based on fake cases, about ED raids and engineered defections. Every time those tactics succeed—as they clearly have here—we become less and less of a democracy. So there is much to mourn in the events of the last week.
On the other hand, there are also many reasons for ambivalence. If you barter Rajya Sabha seats for pecuniary considerations and give them to wealthy businessmen, can you really complain when these businessmen decide that the better deal is to be on the other side? They are not betraying your ideology because that never even entered into their original calculations. It was a simple transaction. And now they have chosen a new party to transact with. At least they are not asking you for their money back.
Fall of Manmohan Singh
At some level, however, none of what has transpired should surprise us. Given AAP’s origins and its record, this is par for the course.
Some of us forget how AAP was launched. It started as India Against Corruption, a movement led by Anna Hazare with Kejriwal and many others as his lieutenants. It was the right time to campaign against corruption. The CAG had held press conferences to announce that its organisation had found evidence of corruption. We now know that some of this was nonsense. Just as it was unusual for a CAG to hold press briefings, even the methods used to calculate so-called corruption were unprecedented.
Such bizarre concepts as a presumptive loss were thrown around, and the media, to their eternal shame, did not question these calculations or even bother to ask why the CAG had gone public and become a celebrity. (Can you name the current CAG or any of Vinod Rai’s successors?)
If the BJP had tried to capitalise on these allegations, people would have got suspicious. But because the campaign against corruption was led by such non-political persons as Hazare and Kejriwal, it gained a certain credibility. These were not politicians, the media assured us, just indignant common citizens who had come together for the public good. What’s more, all the leaders of the movement denied that they wanted to enter politics.
India Against Corruption never drew large crowds in most cities outside of the capital. It remained a Delhi phenomenon whose significance was so hyped by the NOIDA channels that it influenced public perceptions.
It was alleged then that the crowds were supplied by the RSS and various saffron luminaries (including Sadhvi Rithambara, who sprang to fame during the Ayodhya agitation and subsequent demolition) turned up to support Hazare and his movement.
Except that it was never Hazare’s movement to begin with. It was always Kejriwal’s show, and he threw all of his comrades under the bus one by one. This included Hazare himself, but soon everyone of note had left: Kiran Bedi, Yogendra Yadav, Prashant Bhushan, Kumar Vishwas, Shazia Ilmi, etc. Some of them went on to support the BJP.
By then, three things had happened.
One, the hype around the anti-corruption agitation crippled the Manmohan Singh government. Two, it cleared the way for Narendra Modi. And three, we realised that the intention had always been to create a political party that revolved around Kejriwal’s leadership.
Karmic results
Given this background, should we have expected much from AAP? Given the lies it told about former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit and various other leaders, should we have ever expected AAP to stand for anything other than Kejriwal’s own advancement?
Probably not.
But as it turned out, AAP was more successful in office than we had a right to expect: it did good work in the poverty-stricken parts of Delhi, and its record in education and public health was solid.
But of course it was never going to last. When a party is based on nothing more than one man’s ambition, there may be some short-term successes (AAP formed the government in Punjab, for instance), but the hollowness at its core will keep it from earning national prominence.
And those who gathered around Kejriwal, defending him against the charges levelled by the comrades, he had dispensed with, lacked the common sense to recognise that one day he would also dump them, just as he did with his original comrades.
It is telling that hardly any of those who started with Kejriwal have anything good to say about him now. And while opinions may vary about the quality of AAP’s governance in Delhi (though not in Punjab, where the AAP government has been a disaster), not one person still talks about AAP as embodying the values Kejriwal espoused in his India Against Corruption days.
And yet, I have some sympathy with Kejriwal. Neither he nor his AAP colleagues deserved to go to jail in the so-called Liquor Scam case, which, a court has ruled, had no merit. I think there is something shocking and shameful about the way the entire ruling establishment has worked to persecute him.
But ultimately, we have to ask ourselves the big question. Yes, what the Modi government is doing to Kejriwal is wrong. But would there ever have been a Modi government if Kejriwal and his India Against Corruption movement had not destroyed the UPA and cleared the way for Narendra Modi?
Karma has a way of catching up with us all.
Courtesy PTI
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