20 - 26 September 2013 #674

Wagon R vs swish sedans

Ajaz Ashraf
Will the tortoise beat the hare in the Delhi Assembly election race?

aapsandip.blogspot.com
India’s sprawling capital is electing a new assembly in December, and candidates are in election mode, including a candidate who shot to fame during last year’s citizen’s protests against corruption.

Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal is campaigning in a ramshackle Maruti Wagon R driven by a party volunteer. Kejriwal sat in the front. He has never contested an election, let alone win one. But his face and name is now well known because he rocked Delhi two years ago with Anna Hazare to press India’s parliament to pass the Citizen’s Ombudsman Bill to check corruption.

Last year, he was back, vowing to fast unto death, demanding jail for corrupt politicians. He hogged prime time news with his expose of the high and mighty, and recently he was back to fasting in protest against high electricity and water bills.

In between fasts, Kejriwal and his comrades-in-arm floated the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to contest elections in Delhi, where the Congress has been in power for 10 years, in response to politicians who didn’t want to punish the corrupt.

On the creaky wheels and sputtering engine of the Wagon R, a dream skates on the roads of Delhi. There are no pilot cars or motorcycles outriders with sirens here, no truckloads of people shouting hackneyed slogans to herald the advent of a new dawn.

In this age of swish sedans, you’d think the Wagon R can’t possibly sneak past others on the road to victory. But you sense the profound truth of the slogan ‘Small is Beautiful’ as the Wagon R groans up the flyover. Cars overtake Kejriwal, passengers flashing the thumbs-up sign, and the drivers of three-wheel scooters honk and smile at Kejriwal, as he waves at them even as he talks.

In April, I wrote in this column wondering whether Kejriwal could do an Obama in Delhi, plumbing the possibility of a rank-outsider trouncing India’s established political parties. Party sympathisers, or its would-be voters, said, “Really?” Journalists, cynical as ever, declared that I had lost my marbles. Then came a clutch of opinion polls in July-August, grudgingly accepting the emergence of the AAP as a force to be reckoned with.

Having an impact is one thing, winning quite another. “You still remain just a Third Front,” I told Kejriwal as we glided down the flyover. “No way,” he replied. “We will win.” He cited surveys his party has been conducting. You can’t bank on your own surveys, I quipped. “But these surveys did not involve AAP volunteers,” he shot back. “They were conducted by an independent agency.”

From what I gather, AAP needs one final push to cross the hump of disbelief to spring a surprise in Delhi. Once people feel a party can’t form a government on its own, then they desert it on polling day, fearing their vote would otherwise go to waste. Perhaps it is the reason why Kejriwal emphasises that in case Delhi throws up a hung Assembly, he will take neither the support of the Congress or BJP, nor assist them to form Delhi’s next government.

Unless the two contending parties decide on the impossible (come together to form a government) there will be a repoll. “We will get a sweeping majority in such a repoll,” Kejriwal says.

Should AAP defy the pundits to form the government, expect a feverish two months of action. Kejriwal says he will pass the anti-corruption ombudsman bill within 15 days of being sworn in. AAP also plans to frame laws which will introduce decentralisation of power and provide the people control over “funds, functions and functionaries.”

In providing a glimpse to the people of what democracy ought to be, AAP hopes to fire the imagination of people and, yes, contest the general election of next year. We all know the tortoise won the race against the hare. Might not, in 2013, the lowly Wagon R overtake the swish sedans, which established political parties own, on the road to the Delhi Assembly?

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Full text of interview with Kejriwal

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