Nepali Times

Delhi has had its first taste of participatory democracy courtesy the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Falling short of the majority-mark in the Delhi State Assembly and having declared it would take neither the support of the Congress nor the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to form government, the AAP was a little perplexed at the offer of outside support from India’s grand old party.

Encountering a situation not envisaged earlier, the AAP went back to people: it asked them to send SMSs and organised over 200 public meetings for gauging the popular opinion on whether or not it should take the Congress support to form Delhi’s next government. The answer was an overwhelming yes.

Yet, even as this exercise was underway, the AAP was subjected to a shrill, sneering criticism that was revealing of the slavish Indian mentality. We are, so to speak, servile to power, believe in the infallibility of those who wield it, inclined to entrust our fate in their hands, and accept their right to special privileges.

Initially, both the Congress and the BJP offered their unconditional support to the debutant party to form the next Delhi government. Their offer was not altruistic – they believed the sheer inexperience of AAP leaders at governance would have them fumble and bumble, exposing them as a gaggle of activists not only ignorant to the mechanisms of state power, as against people’s power, but also prone to making promises impossible to fulfil.

Many AAP leaders were inclined to pick the gauntlet the entrenched political class had thrown. They believed to shun the Congress and BJP offer would bolster their charge, which the media was articulating, of the AAP being an irresponsible force, adept at criticism but disinclined to assume responsibilities. Yet almost all in the AAP were also acutely aware that to take the unconditional support of the Congress (the BJP became silent after the initial offer) would entail deviating from the party’s avowed principle. The question before the AAP leaders was how to resolve the contradiction.

Obviously, this wasn’t the first instance of a political party facing the prospect of forming a government with the assistance of its rivals. In 1995, for instance, the BJP supported Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) Mayawati as chief minister in Uttar Pradesh, and then withdrew support from her in just three months. It, again, propped up the BSP government in 2002-2003, leading to the desertion of its upper caste voters who constituted its primary support base. The BJP was to languish in oblivion in the state for the next decade, until now.

Some might even say that had the Left taken the opinion of its voters, it would have found them endorsing the suggestion of making Jyoti Basu the prime minister in 1996. However, the party bosses concluded that Basu’s shift to the centre could prove inimical to their interests in Kerala and West Bengal. Yet, ironically, the Left took their voters for granted as they departed from their pro-peasant line and deployed state power to oust farmers from Singur and Nandrigram to help big businesses, ultimately leading to their ouster from power.

In this sense, the AAP’s decision to seek the opinion of people on government formation is a refreshing break from the past. Underlying the AAP’s decision are three other ideas. One, it is possible for people to reverse or alter their opinion already expressed on an issue and that this change must get reflected in the party decision. Two, it is erroneous to assume that those who voted a party are in agreement with every decision it takes. Three, democracy demands constant participation from the people, and ought not to be confined to pressing the button on the electronic voting machine every five years. In fact, the AAP’s last weekend exercise is a curtain-raiser to its plans of nudging Delhiites into a participatory form of democracy.

Media analysts and politicians greeted the AAP’s novel experiment with derision. This is because we have become accustomed to vesting authority in the political class to decide on our fate. And because we accept their superiority, we believe they are entitled to special privileges, to power and pelf illegitimately acquired. No wonder, Indian politics become the preserve of those who have exceptional wealth and command muscle-power or boast of family lineage.

Just what we have become was best encapsulated to me through a story the late Janata Dal general secretary Surendra Mohan narrated to me years ago. When the Janata Dal lost the vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha, Mohan returned the official car and took a bus to the party office. At the gate of the office, a recently deployed sentry stopped Mohan. “I am the general secretary,” he said. The sentry sneered and said, “You can’t be the general secretary. I just saw you get down the bus.”

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