BackIs Arvind Kejriwal India’s Beppe Grillo?
In the run-up to Delhi elections, Kejriwal has exhibited the characteristics that led to Grillo’s success in Italy
Premium(Pradeep Gaur/ Mint)
New Delhi: If opinion polls are to be believed, the one state that will deny the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) juggernaut a win in the upcoming election will be Delhi. While one poll predicts a hung assembly, another projects a narrow win for a record fourth consecutive time by incumbent Congress chief minister Sheila Dikshit.
The polls also tell us that this has more to do with the fact that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) led by Arvind Kejriwal will emerge as the spoiler, cornering a 21% vote share, rather than the ability of the Congress to overcome triple anti-incumbency.
The obvious question to ask then is whether Kejriwal will be the Beppe Grillo of Indian politics. Grillo is an Italian comedian who inspired the Five Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle) that shook the foundations of Italian politics. In the national election held in February, Grillo’s party ended up with 25.5% of the vote—signalling, for the first time, a third alternative in Italian politics.
Like Kejriwal, Grillo positioned himself as a disruptive force in his country’s politics and immediately appealed to a public disenchanted with organized politics. Their objectives and style too are stunningly similar.
In an interview to New Yorker, the weekly magazine, Grillo said something that we have often heard Kejriwal say: “Voters have to enter the fray, take a personal role in political life. They have to inform themselves directly about issues, and not just swallow what they hear in the mainstream news. I want to tell Italians, ‘You cannot delegate anymore—this movement is you’. "
Kejriwal has similarly appealed to the grassroots—something that was, until politics became a big money play, the sine qua non of Indian politics. Ever since he launched his campaign, Kejriwal’s signature has been to work from below. Nor does this simply mean a door-to-door campaign—even the political decisions of AAP are based on a show of hands at open meetings.
Mainstream parties may not acknowledge it, but I am sure they recognize the sense of empowerment that these actions are imparting to the general public. This is especially relevant at a time when they feel economically disenfranchised—the economy’s growth rate had plunged sharply from 9% plus to a projected 4% plus in the span of four years—and politically disconnected, with leaders rarely stooping to make contact at the grassroots.
At the same time, Kejriwal has always exhibited a sense of certitude—the hallmark of a true leader. From the time he chose to throw in his lot with social activist Anna Hazare to the point when he decided to part ways and launch a political party or showcasing alleged acts of corruption or picking campaign issues, Kejriwal has never for a moment exhibited a sense of doubt.
An enabling context has been provided by the disastrous governance record of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) over nine years in general and the last four years in particular, together with an inept showing by the political opposition. So far the resulting vacuum has been filled by the judiciary, which had become the Plan B after the executive’s abdication. As a result, the judiciary has taken key decisions regarding everything from the allotment of spectrum and coal mines to the protection of the environment.
But, even in the best of times, this can only be a temporary arrangement. In a democracy, it is always the elected executive that has to discharge functions of the state. And judicial intervention in governance will eventually end up being sub-optimal.
Kejriwal, like his Italian counterpart, has also timed his entry into politics very well. By spearheading the fight against corruption and then pushing for an anti-corruption legislation—which has failed to get Parliament’s approval—Kejriwal tapped into public anger and disenchantment.
Now, with a grassroots campaign, he has only reinforced his appeal to the masses, whose aspirations have been given flight, but are frustrated because the state has failed to create the enabling circumstances. In Delhi, Kejriwal has also found a state where class instead of caste is the dominant factor; his focus on outer Delhi, where the economically disenfranchised have been confined as the country’s capital is rapidly gentrified, offers a brilliant political foil to his party’s ideological compact.
In the run-up to the Delhi election, Kejriwal has exhibited all the characteristics that inspired the success of Grillo. The question is whether he will be able to realize the success the opinion polls predict. If he does, then, at the least, Kejriwal would have turned a three-legged political race (if you include the Bahujan Samaj Party which claimed nearly a fifth of the vote last time) in Delhi into a multi-polar contest.
Either way, AAP is the party to watch.
Anil Padmanabhan is deputy managing editor of Mint and writes every week on the intersection of politics and economics. Comments are welcome at capitalcalculus@livemint.com
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