Curtains for the AAP?

The cacophony around the AAP has become deafening. As the Hindustan Times cartoon depicts so tellingly the people of Delhi who had presented a whole bunch of Jhadoos to the AAP are now finding that party members are using them to fight each other rather than cleaning up (literally and metaphorically) the city.

Conventional wisdom says that the AAP infighting has damaged them and their image very badly. Men and women of repute no longer want to be associated with them and are leaving in droves. They are wasting time and the tax payers money while they fight each other in a painfully public way. However, conventional wisdom has not been very effective in forecasting what the AAP is doing and whether it will be successful. The first bunch of nay sayers ran away when Kejriwal quit as Delhi CM the first time. Then there was the fiasco of the Lok Sabha elections. And yet the party swept the Delhi Assembly in an unprecedented fashion. Clearly political pundits and the western media have a habit of getting things wrong as far as the AAP is concerned. Other political parties, notably the BJP have been wrong as well. I think this may be the reason that gloating voices are a bit more muted this time. Nobody would like to be proved wrong four times in a row!

Harsh reality says that there can only be one leader, whether it is of a political party, a corporation, a cricket team or whatever. While there can be room for dissent and debate it cannot be allowed to overwhelm the organisation. Consider the facts about the AAP. The one and only vote catcher is Kejriwal. The others are 'ideologues', 'conscience keepers' 'lok pals' etc etc. In other words, none of them have anything to contribute to the actual business of running a political party or winning elections. As far as the Bhushans are concerned the writing was on the wall when Shanti Bhushan said that Bedi would be a better candidate than Kejriwal for CM Delhi. A comment singularly lacking in sense is what I say and what the Delhi public realised quite quickly. The Bhushan family seems to be congenital obstructionists if that is the correct phrase. They will willfully oppose anything that appears to be progressing in the right direction. I think they would have actually been happier if the AAP had lost in Delhi so that they would still have a role in a sort of constant work in progress as it were. Yogendra Yadav is a different cup of tea. My reading of him is that he is a sincere intellectual who was tempted to chance his hand in the rough and tumble of politics. When the results finally emerged it became progressively apparent that there was no real role for him in Delhi. He was more closely allied to Haryana and Kejriwal made it quite clear (and rightly so) that the AAP would not be looking at expansion into the State assemblies anytime soon. That put paid to Yadav's ambitions and I think he rolled his dice in the wrong direction.

The strange thing is that all the events of the last year have only led to progressively strengthening the AAP and specifically Kejriwal. I think by now internal dissent has been substantially doused. There is a cadre who firmly believes in Kejriwal and who will not oppose him too easily. Synergistic thought is a prerequisite for growth. It has been a hard fought battle for Kejriwal but I think he has emerged stronger at the end of it. Delhi will benefit from the clarity of vision and single-minded focus on execution that the new and energised AAP will bring to the table.