Three score and more years have passed since Daniel Bell predicted the end of ideology. Ideologies haven’t ended, but two parties without ideology came up in India. One is dead; the other is on its deathbed, felled in a neat Rajya Sabha coup.
The first was the Janata of the 1970s, a hotchpotch of five or more political entities that merged with one purpose—defeat the common enemy Congress. No sooner had the purpose been served, than it withered away.
No prizes for guessing the second. It’s the AAP of Arvind Kejriwal. It too came up with the aim of defeating a corrupt city regime, but soon became a joke like Stephen Leacock’s 1914 satire The Great Fight for Clean Government. It saw immoral politics all around; preached moral politics, but practised amoral politics.
Both had messianic personalities inspiring them. What played out as a tragedy involving Jayaprakash Narayan in the 1970s turned out to be a farce with Anna Hazare in the 2010s. The surprise is that the AAP lasted a decade and half, won four assembly polls and is still keeping a government in Punjab. It may revive again, but the sheen is gone.
Arvind Kejriwal | Sanjay Ahlawat
Where it went fundamentally wrong was that it missed the two I-s, one of which every party needs—ideology or identity. The Aam Aadmis made it a virtue of espousing neither.
Like the Janata, the AAP has had no leftist or socialistic pretensions. In the binary of society-versus-individual, leftists tend to lean towards society. The AAP's politics has been individual- or citizen-oriented. The party looked at issues as issues of the individual citizen, and sought administrative (not political) solutions to those. Leftists talk of collective good; AAP talked of individual good.
Neither has the AAP been rightist. Economic-right parties, such as the British Tories, the US Republicans and the defunct Swatantra, have clear-cut stands on curbing labour rights, bringing in hire-and-fire laws, and encouraging economic laissez-faire. The AAP had no such economic philosophy; at least it did not spell out one. Nor did the AAP have the identity-rightism of the BJP, the UK Independents, or France's National Rally, all of which espouse a sectarian nationalism.
Is the AAP centrist, like the Congress? No. Centrist parties adapt their ideology to the changing times and issues. The Congress has been moderate, extremist, believed in mixed economy, switched to regulated laissez-faire, championed secularism, practised minorityism and adopted mild hindutva. The AAP championed neither minorityism nor hindutva, neither demanded labour reforms nor asked for selling government companies.
The AAP has not been a political party, but a civic party. It practised not politics, but civics—the civics of what citizens ought to get from the state, and ought to give the state.
Then how did it survive this long, and rule Delhi for a decade and half? By practising a politics of the possible, and carrying within it elements of ideological parties. It believed in leftist kind of welfare policies, by which the state distributes largesse to citizens (not necessarily to society). The free power, water, schools, transport and clinics are all largesses given away by a left-leaning administration to citizens.
Flip the coin and you find elements of rightism, especially in the AAP's inclination towards the platform of individual rights. Its espousal of causes such as the right to information, and its strident campaign against the bribe-taking clerkdom have all been rightist causes.
In the end, it fell between several stools.
prasannan@theweek.in