Need for caution

Kejriwal has kindled people's hopes by successfully identifying himself with the common man and catching their imagination.

The enthralling success of the Aam Aadmi Party in the Delhi elections, defying all exit polls, has generally been hailed as opening new vistas in a depressing political scenario for jaded voters besides spawning an intense debate on the need to change the way political parties function. It is being viewed as an exordium to a new political discourse.
It is true that the AAP did change the political discourse by raising the issue of democratising political parties which are run by the high commands and ordinary members have little say either in the selection of candidates or in formulating policies. Parties are led by ‘supremos’- an anachronism in a democracy.

Arvind Kejriwal has, doubtless, kindled people’s hopes by successfully identifying himself with the common man and catching their imagination. His feat is ineffable as he started from scratch without having any background of caste or money power. He took personal risk by contesting against Sheila Dikshit and trounced her convincingly. Before him, N T Rama Rao  and Prafulla Kumar Mahanta did it but still there was a difference. While Rama Rao raised the issue of Telugu pride, Mahanta had the background of leading a mass agitation on the issue of Bangladeshi immigrants who threatened to obliterate the Assamese identity.

People have listened to Kejriwal’s homilies and supported him so far, but now they must beware. In 1989, V P Singh swept to power on the plank of honesty. Nobody questioned his integrity but he miserably failed in delivering results, perhaps vindicating his own prophesy that he would be a disaster as the prime minister. He had promised before elections that the culprits of Bofors would be brought to book immediately after his party came to power. At a rally in Patna, he said that there was an account in the name of Lotus in the Swiss Bank which was allegedly Rajiv Gandhi’s account as Rajiv also meant lotus, and promised to make everything public within 15 days of his coming to power.

What happened? He could not ride back to power despite the political tremor he created by implementing the recommendations of the Mandal Commission for reservation of jobs in government services for the OBCs.

The AAP falling a few seats short of majority is a blessing in disguise for the party as it is not able to form the government. Had it formed the government, it would have been on the mountain of people’s expectations. Generating expectations is one thing and delivering results is another.

In Italy, Benito Mussolini, a leading socialist agitator and journalist, advocated Italy’s entry into the First World War against Austria for winning the areas inhabited by Italians which were still within the Austrian empire. Thus, he became more of a nationalist but skillfully combined the appeal of socialism with that of nationalism. These are two ideologies which influenced the course of events from the middle of the nineteenth century until the end of the First World War. These were two opposing ideologies -- nationalists put the interests of the country above everything else whereas socialists valued the interests of workers more than that of their country. Therefore, socialists were regarded as traitors by nationalists.

Extreme socialism

Mussolini took advantage of the accumulated resentment against government because of depression, distress and unemployment to gain support from his own party, the fascists. In 1922, he was able to persuade the King to appoint him prime minister, and then used all his authority to abolish all parties except his own. In Germany, Adolf Hitler was employed by the German army to probe a failed communist revolution which had broken out in southern Germany, and to organise a suitable right-wing political party so that the army could influence politics. He soon became leader of an unknown small party which combined extreme nationalism with extreme socialism, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, better known as Nazi. It was made from the German word National, which is pronounced as Natsi-onal.

Hitler used the economic crisis of 1931 to his advantage when the unemployment mounted to six million and the whole structure of German industry and finance was on the brink. People lost confidence in democracy and some of them turned to the Communists while others turned to the Nazis. He promised the people who had never accepted as final Germany’s defeat in 1918 a new and successful war, an end to unemployment and protection against communism. In the general elections held in July 1932, the Nazis emerged as the largest party and in January 1933, Hitler became the prime minister and abolished other parties. The rest is history.

However, it is not suggested that the emergence of the AAP is a bad omen for the country. It is welcome and other parties should be forced to democratise themselves. Most of the parties have lifelong presidents though they have sham of elections. The Progressive movement in the USA in the first two decades of the twentieth century brought about an end to the culture of high command in the party. It gave birth to primary elections in which ordinary members of the party select candidates for the elections- House of Representatives, senatorial or gubernatorial. The same happened in Canada at the same time.

In India, the anti-defection law was enacted but it was not ensured that parties hold regular elections. Most of the parties are being run like single proprietorship firms. Democracy has taken strong roots in the country but it has to be refined by involving people’s participation in policy making.