JOIN USPressure from the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) and other Left parties is unlikely to result in the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) taking an ideological stand on different issues.
According to sources in the party, the AAP would stick to their current strategy of raising issues of corruption, governance and miseries of the people. “The party will continue to highlight public discontent. As of now, the party cannot go into articulating ideological position. Issues like corruption and governance are more important for us and we would be raising them,” a senior party leader said.
“Instead of going into such debates, we are interacting with the people who are fighting at the grassroot level. In addition to the agenda of cleaning Indian politics, we have included issues like loot of resources and centralisation of power,” the leader added. The pressure to clarify their ideological position, especially on economic issues such as liberalisation and foreign investments are not only coming from mainstream Left parties, including the CPM and the CPI, but also from other Left political groups.
“While the AAP proposes to tackle some of the critical problems faced by the people, including corruption, it has so far been silent on the nature of the economic policies which have produced these problems. For instance, the continuously rising electricity rates are due to the privatisation of power distribution in the city,” CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat writes in his article for the forthcoming issue of the party’s mouthpiece, People’s Democracy.
In the article, Karat has even accused the AAP of evading clarification on ideological issues. “Do they advocate any alternative policies to neo-liberalism? There seems to be a tendency to gloss over these matters, perhaps due to the contradictions that exist in the social base which has rallied around in the party.