A visitor from a nearby planet to our shores in the month of December would angrily demand a refund from his travel agent: He had been sent to the wrong country. Instead of arriving at the republic of India, he had arrived at the republic of Utopia, Sir Thomas More's imaginary state in which laws, government and social conditions are perfect. Indeed, you don't have to be a Martian to ask for a refund. The harassed citizen of India wakes up each morning wondering which homeland he has woken up in.
On December10 around 4 pm, as the final tally of the Delhi results flashed on TV screens, Harsh Vardhan (looking unusually relaxed) announced his party would prefer to sit on the opposition benches because it did not have a majority. Absolutely true. BJP was short by the impossible figure of four! So, Vardhan suffused with a new sense of exalted virtue and political morality decided to "serve the people". Excuse my sarcasm, but it could be said satire died in India the day Vardhan delivered that statement.
Horse-trading? Buying MLAs and MPs? Dispatching lawmakers to some impregnable fort? Perish the thought. Anyway, it is the 'other' party which is the master of dirty tricks.
I do not wish to labour the point but something surreal and sublime is happening in our 'corrupt' land. Its custodians, overnight, have transformed themselves into angels brimming with the holy spirit.
Their self-prescribed conduct from now on must be nothing short of Gandhian. From rushing through the Lokpal Bill, to sorting out the mess created by the Supreme Court order recriminalizing homosexuality, to planning a watertight Bill that ensures no loopholes exist for "criminals" to contest elections, to Rahul Gandhi's astounding discovery regarding engaging with the people (you can see how far we have come when such a basic principle of participative democracy is submitted as a bold, new idea), to electoral reform including state funding of elections—India is close to becoming a paradise.
Why the reinvention of a despised political class transpired is self-evident. Call it the Kejriwal effect. This phenomenon has hit the nation like a tsunami. That the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) nearly won Delhi is not so much a headache for the political parties. The headache is how they won. A newspaper headline asked the question, "Has AAP changed the rules of the game?" If anything, you could accuse the paper of understatement.
As a result, we are witnessing the entertaining spectacle of our political parties in a state of almighty funk. It is rare for our devious, know-all netas to be confronted by a situation that is beyond the purview of skulduggery. Not this time. They cannot dismiss Delhi as a freak result or a 'localized phenomenon' because the AAP effect has captured the imagination of the entire country.
Cunning minds, meanwhile, across the political spectrum are furiously at work to discredit and smash the work of Kejriwal and his magnificent team before their functioning style becomes the norm. That is the core anxiety giving sleepless nights to our rulers. So what is the smash strategy?
On a TV debate, the fluent but facile Mani Shankar Aiyar scolded Yogendra Yadav for "running away from his responsibility" by refusing to form the government. This despite several juicy carrots dangled by the Congress—conditional, unconditional, issue-based support—through which Arvind Kejriwal could become chief minister.
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Aiyar went so far as to say that refusal to form the government constituted a betrayal of the AAP's mandate. (On Saturday, Kejriwal, trying to look 'responsible', set impossible terms for accepting Congress support—making his terms sound almost like direct mockery. In this grandstanding at prime time, Sonia is bound to lose.)
When I reassured Yadav that his party was completely justified in refusing to play ball, Aiyar accused me of talking "endearing nonsense". I was relieved by the fact that my nonsense is at least endearing. The long-winded Meenakshi Lekhi of BJP backed Aiyar in urging AAP to do the right thing. Something mysterious is going on here. Why this frenetic anxiety on the part of the two principal parties to persuade AAP to form the government?
Terror stalks political India. It is not so much the success of jhadoo but the way it sweeps. If the functioning of this broom becomes the role model, the representative politician might need to look for another job. The "outsider" status of AAP is very bad news for our entrenched "system".
To ensure the swift death of AAP, it must be ensnared into the system; it must get its hands dirty. Hectic exertions to crown Kejriwal, without a majority, chief minister are based on the conviction that once he is trapped into the mainstream he will get caught up in the shenanigans the nation is so sickeningly familiar with. In other words, AAP has to be turned into a "traditional" party.
Of course, all this expectation tinged with a little idealism may be a chimera. Arvind Kejriwal has surrounded himself with a motley, noisy group of followers. It is possible they could be at each other's throats next week (already we see signs of this). Never mind, at least for a few months they gave us a glimpse of another country.
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This article first appeared in the Times of India
