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Business News/ Opinion / The insurgent government of Delhi
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The insurgent government of Delhi

AAP is interested not in governing Delhi, but in undermining its institutions

Illustration: Jayachandran/MintPremium
Illustration: Jayachandran/Mint

A strange spectacle was witnessed in Delhi this week. The elected government of the state—led by chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)—staged a sit-in protest in the shadow of Parliament for two days. Kejriwal and his ministers wanted the Union government to suspend “erring" policemen and hand over control of Delhi Police to the state government. The Delhi Police is controlled by the Union ministry of home affairs.

On Tuesday, they partially got what they wanted after the Union government buckled by sending two police officers on leave. Given the political nature of the AAP government, this is not the last time an unreasonable demand has been made by it. India’s capital is likely to see more of its antics.

This saga of a chief minister on protest began last week when Delhi’s law minister, Somnath Bharti, landed at an odd hour in his constituency—Khirki—and ordered the police to raid a residential building. Bharti alleged illegal activities such as prostitution in the area. The police, predictably, refused to do his bidding as he provided no proof to back his allegations. Within no time, Kejriwal came out in support of his minister and demanded that the policemen who refused to heed his orders be suspended. The Union government ordered a probe against the officers in question, but that did not placate Kejriwal. He escalated the demand to vesting control of the police with the state government and started an indefinite sit-in protest in the heart of the capital.

One cynical, but increasingly believable, argument is that Kejriwal and his ministers are not interested in governing Delhi. All they are interested in is keeping their party in the news until the forthcoming general election. In the ensuing media spectacle, the task of governing Delhi has fallen by the wayside.

This is not an uncommon tactic for insurgent political parties, globally, to engage in. Citizens who feel short-changed by existing parties find the new political groups far more engaging and cohesive. Very often such parties, immensely talented in communication and strategy, are unable to carry out humdrum tasks of governance. The AAP is displaying these characteristics.

There is, however, another way to look at these developments, in terms of political ideas that have motivated India.

The late Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao once said there were only two serious visions for India—those put forward by Jawaharlal Nehru and Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. Barring their differences on secularism and the role of religion in public life, both visions placed great emphasis on a modern institutional order. There is, however, a third strain in Indian political thinking. This is the Jayaprakash Narayan (JP)-Ram Manohar Lohia perspective: a combination of redistribution and caste-based mobilization that fuelled the emergence of regional parties. It had no coherent, programmatic vision for what India should be.

The AAP is clearly a variant of the JP-Lohia way of thinking. Just like the original version that paid no importance to institutions, the AAP, too, does not care. Since it assumed office on 28 December, the Arvind Kejriwal government has done much to rattle various institutions. First it was two service-delivery establishments—the Delhi Jal Board that is tasked with water supply, and the electricity distribution companies. Now, it is the Delhi Police that is on the AAP government’s hit list. There is a method in the AAP’s madness.

At each step, the party has argued that existing institutions do not work. Now there is much that does not work in India. But the country can hardly be called dysfunctional. So the AAP has gone one step ahead to make its claims come true: it is trying to wreck institutions. That is not all: there is virtually no distinction between the AAP as a party and the government it runs. This is a dangerous thing. Institutions take a long while to build and even greater time to acquire credibility. If existing ones are damaged, then anarchy is just a step away. The AAP does not seem to mind this.

There is at least one example from Indian history when the coalescing of party and government played havoc on the fate of a state. In West Bengal, the three decades of rule by the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led government destroyed institutional integrity in that state. Nothing could happen without the express permission of the party and the government became a mere extension of it. By the end of CPI(M)’s rule, West Bengal was in shambles—economically and politically—and the state, literally, withered away. What is being seen in Delhi is a far more potent version of what was seen in West Bengal. The effects of the AAP-type politics in a far-smaller and more urbanized setting can only lead to anarchy.

The AAP’s politics is clear. What is not clear is why the Congress continues to back it in the Delhi legislature and why the Union government is letting it get away with its crude tactics. Perhaps the Congress is in a bind. No doubt the AAP is a lawfully elected and constituted government but what it is doing borders very close to breaking the law.

Is the AAP interested in governing Delhi? Tell us at views@livemint.com

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Published: 21 Jan 2014, 08:21 PM IST
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