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Business News/ Opinion / Arvind Kejriwal’s politics of difference
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Arvind Kejriwal’s politics of difference

Kejriwal's campaign is energetic, but he isn't substantially different

Illustration: Jayachandran/MintPremium
Illustration: Jayachandran/Mint

Arvind Kejriwal’s politics and his political strategy for the forthcoming state assembly elections in Delhi are interesting. On Sunday, this former income-tax officer revved up his campaign with a Jhadu (broom) Chalao Yatra, and will cover Delhi’s 70 constituencies in a month’s time.

Overall, his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has continued to stick with its original platform—anti-corruption—that gained prominence in the past year or so. This was the result of the largely urban campaign to get a new Lokpal Bill. A variant of this Bill—championed by activist Anna Hazare and others—has for long been an article of faith for these activists. Somewhere on that journey his political appetite was whetted and he parted company with Hazare. So is his politics merely a case of an individual’s inflated political ambitions?

Not really.

Kejriwal’s appeal rests with the middle class, in fact a specific—but significant—fraction of the middle class. The National Sample Survey Office’s (NSSO) latest consumption survey (2011-12) shows that the cut-off for the top 30% of citizens living in urban India is a monthly per capita expenditure of Rs2,460. For a family of five people, this adds up to Rs12,300. In Delhi, the number of such citizens is significantly higher, roughly around 42%. It is this class that Kejriwal wants to tap.

In Delhi, these citizens are disenchanted with the two big parties, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The former has its vote bank in the very poor while the latter—even as it is widely seen as a party of the middle class—has its support base among better-off citizens. Sandwiched in between is Kejriwal’s target group—the auto rickshaw drivers, small self-employed people and others. These are citizens who often get harassed by government officials and the police disproportionately. And Kejriwal’s anti-corruption campaign is striking a chord with them. This class could otherwise be expected to vote for the BJP. With Kejriwal, the fight is veering strongly in a triangular direction.

If his politics is smart, Kejriwal’s other electoral plank leads to an unrealistic variety of economic policymaking. Before he began his electoral campaign, Kejriwal campaigned against inflated electricity bills. At one point he advocated non-payment of such bills. His party’s promises about providing free water to such citizens’ gives another clue to policymaking. These, while they are clearly unrealistic, are understandable. If curbing corruption is an important promise, giving something to citizens has to be an important plank in India’s populist landscape. The question is how will his party deliver? The AAP has not provided any road map for this. It cannot because these promises are hard to meet for any party that gets elected to power unless it resorts to extraordinary fiscal expansion. This does not mean that an attempt will not be made; it means that such an attempt will be devoid of economic sense and will end up hurting Delhi’s economic prospects if implemented.

The other equally interesting aspect of his campaign is his flirtation with a Muslim cleric from Uttar Pradesh who allegedly has political traction in Delhi. This has led to controversy and the AAP has been hard-pressed to answer questions on how it is different from other parties it seeks to replace. Rationally, it should be seen as a diversifying strategy under which it does not place all its eggs in one basket (the fight against corruption). But equally, it reveals a certain lack of confidence on its part about its original plank.

This outlook—populism coupled with an alloy of secularism—is the staple of all regional parties. The Samajwadi Party comes to mind as does Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress. So, in a sense, Kejriwal has not been able to break the mould of usual variants of politics seen across different states in India. What differentiates the contest in Delhi is the tired campaign being waged by one mainstream party and the internal rebellion in the other one. Kejriwal, with a relatively more energetic campaign and an economic profile of his target group, can be said to be a bit luckier. The seat and vote share projections being bandied about are the product of this electoral environment. In terms of politics, he does not represent anything substantially different.

How different is the AAP’s politics from those of its rivals? Tell us at views@livemint.com

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Published: 11 Nov 2013, 07:33 PM IST
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