'आप' पर छिटपुट विमर्श

आम आदमी पार्टी की रीति-नीति पर जब भी बात होती है ज्यादातर व्यक्तियों पर केंद्रित रहती है। या उसके आंतरिक लोकतंत्र या आंदोलनकारी भूमिका पर। टीवी पर बातचीत बिखरी रहती है और अखबारों, खासतौर से हिन्दी अखबारों की दिलचस्पी विमर्श पर बची नहीं। अलबत्ता पिछले हफ्ते 14 मार्च को प्रभात खबर ने अपने एक पेज इस मसले को दिया, जिसमें घटनाक्रम का क्रमबद्ध विवरण और कुछ दृष्टिकोण दिए गए हैं। इनमें सुहास पालशीकर का दृष्टिकोण ध्यान खींचता है। उन्हें लगता है कि यह भी दूसरे दलों की तरह सामान्य पार्टी बनकर रह गई है। अभी कहना मुश्किल है कि इसकी राह क्या होगी, पर यह पार्टी दूसरे दलों जैसी नहीं होगी, यह मानने का कारण भी सामने नहीं आ रहा है। खासतौर से आंतरिक लोकतंत्र को लेकर, क्योंकि यदि वैचारिक स्तर पर मतभेद होंगे तो उनका निपटारा भी लोकतांत्रिक तरीके से ही होगा। बहरहाल इस दौरान 'आप' से जुड़ी कुछ सामग्री आपके सामने पेश है, जिसमें क्रिस्टोफर जैफरलॉट का एक्सप्रेस में प्रकाशित लेख भी है। ईपीडब्ल्यू में आनन्द तेलतुम्बडे और एक्सप्रेस में प्रकाशित प्रताप भानु मेहता के आलेख भी पढ़ने योग्य हैं, जो दिल्ली विधानसबा चुनाव में 'आप' की विजय के संदर्भ में लिखे गए हैं।

A Victory of Possibilities
Pratap Bhanu Mehta

...The second challenge and opportunity is this: It was fashionable to portray the AAP as unleashing another populist class war, fiscally imprudent and insensitive to growth. This was a gross exaggeration unleashed by those who were engaging in class warfare anyway. But the central challenge facing India is how to create cultures of negotiation around important issues where we do not oscillate between cronyism and populism. All the important issues facing us — pricing water and electricity, managing land and environment, access to health and education — have been stymied by this oscillation. Even now, the fog of obfuscation and false choices in these areas is threatening our future. Creating credible and inclusive negotiation on these issues is the central task. In India, the rich have evaded accountability by raising the spectre of class warfare, and the poor have been cheated by populism. There has to be a liberal critique of oligarchy at the top, and a social democratic critique of populism at the bottom. We hope the AAP is the harbinger of this change.

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Something borrowed

Written by Christophe Jaffrelot | Published on:March 14, 2015 12:00 am

The current tensions in the AAP, particularly those which have led to Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav being voted out of its political affairs committee, may be better understood if one realises that the party lies at the intersection of traditions that have their own potential and contradictions. The AAP has inherited the legacy of two major political traditions in India, Gandhian and socialist. This is not the first time that a political movement has combined both. In the 1970s, Jayaprakash Narayan had tried to do the same. But the challenges that Arvind Kejriwal faces are of a different magnitude.

The first challenge has to do with the Gandhian dimension of his ideology, clearly spelled out in Swaraj, the book he published in 2012. In it, he targets corruption as well as the influence of the corporate sector over government. “Some ministers and officers have become puppets in the hands of powerful industrial houses,” he says (and one can probably retain the present tense of this citation). But Swaraj is more interesting for the way it deals with the institutional power structure of India. The gram sabha, the village assembly, is the cornerstone of Kejriwal’s project, if one goes by this book. This ideal harks back to the Gandhian vision of the independent village. “The gram sabha should have the authority and right to decide about issues related to the village,” according to Kejriwal. To those who may object that this is pure romanticism, he replies that there are already “examples of direct democracy in our country at present”. To make this point, he cites the way Anna Hazare (who wrote the preface) changed the face of Ralegan Siddhi. Kejriwal’s view of the village has resonances of the conflict-free approach to society that the Mahatma cultivated. For both, the village is virtually harmonious. Caste- or class-based divisions are simply not mentioned.

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Anand Teltumbde

AAP as a Start-up and the New 'App'

...What is behind the astounding success of AAP? Even in its debut in the 2013 Delhi assembly elections, the party had stunned many political pundits by emerging as the largest legislative party and forming the government with unasked-for-support from the Congress. AAP did not do badly in its conduct. The media and the middle classes failed to comprehend many of its acts but they caught the fancy of ordinary people. While the former denounced Kejriwal’s agitational conduct against the police as anarchist, for ordinary people this was a cherished sight to see a chief minister sleeping on the road, daring the biting cold of Delhi while agitating against the police, for them, the most demonic face of the state. The party’s conduct was quite consistent with the disruptive idea it represented as a political start-up. But soon it squandered all the goodwill by abruptly resigning from the government, ostensibly pitching its sights on South Block. It was a serious miscalculation to take on the well-entrenched players in the political market. The party came out badly bruised so much so that many pundits discounted its capacity to recoup. But with the exemplary agility of a start-up, it reorganised itself, plainly apologised to its “customers” for its follies, keenly listened to them and tweaked its offering so as to re-resonate with them. It was, of course, aided by the increasing resentment against the misrule of Modi and the monkey tricks of his minions.

Indeed, AAP is a start-up quite like a technology start-up that gives established giants a run for their money with its agile business model, nimbleness and ability to innovate. The self-confident neo-liberal generation in our metros, believing in India’s infinite prowess to be a superpower, which they thought was shackled only by the outmoded, corrupt and incompetent politicians, longed for some such thing to happen. They thus enthusiastically jumped into the agitation for ridding the country of corruption through the institution of Jan Lokpal, launched with the help of a mascot, Anna Hazare, a small-time moralist freak. With this successful test marketing, AAP was launched as an anti-politics political enterprise. It instantly became a hit with all the idealists sans ideology. Discarding ideological baggage in favour of new ideas that work may be good in these post-ideological times but there is the risk of slipping into the old ditch. After all, beyond feigning ideo­logies, none of the old political players too had any ideology; what worked have always been some proverbial freebies and majoritarian appeals. Unfortunately AAP does not appear averse to them.

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