The Unmanifesto, Then?

What precisely has the league of fairly ‘ordinary men’ (and some women) accomplished in the realm of the extraordinary? Arguably, the AAP has reminded established political parties that those who aspire to power have to connect with the constituency they want to represent. For political parties, there is simply no alternative, neither muscular political rhetoric, nor helicopter visits to electoral spaces on the eve of elections, neither the playing off of caste and religious identities against each other, nor the offer of superficial collective benefits. AAP has also encouraged the belief that alternatives to a moribund and stale political system can be found. We have to look for and pursue these alternatives.

This is not the first time that such hope has been aroused in a thoroughly disenchanted political community. J.P. Narayan awakened faith when he led a major onslaught on the corridors of power in the early 1970s. In 1977, his persona presided over the electoral defeat of the Emergency regime, and the rise of an alternative in the form of the Janata Party. Within three years, the Janata regime collapsed under the weight of its own contradictions.

The lesson that India’s political history has taught us is this; it is relatively easy to stir and motivate people who are fed up with the existing system. It is far more difficult to conceptualise how exactly the agenda on offer provides an alternative—a workable one—to what exists. It’s precisely this worry that pre-­­empts unconditional support to the AAP by many. There is much to commend in the party; there is also cause for disquiet.

Take the agenda of the party. This frankly resembles the one civil society organisations subscribe to: clean up the system, deliver social goods efficiently and at affor­dable rates, make people shareholders in decision- making, and establish institutions that will eradicate corruption. The AAP’s agenda is an agenda of governance; it simply lacks a political perspective. This oversimplified and limited agenda has undeniably proved attractive to people across the board. And why not? The agenda belongs to a post-ideological world, shorn of deeper understandings of the complexities of society, and the tensions of the political community.

Consider the dominant motif—corruption. Is not corruption the symptom and not the cause of the malaise that has attacked Indian politics? The rapid tilt of the state towards big business, and the production of a political culture of impunity, has jacked up expropriation of public resources to absurd proportions. The AAP engages with the political culture of impunity, does it plan to engage with the phenomenon of crony capitalism? What is its take on capitalism, which reduces everything to a commodity, and everyone including citizens to consumers, in any case?

Excessive focus on trees at the expense of the wood can prove treacherous in political life. Recollect that there is one country that has achieved the chief agenda of the AAP, eradication of corruption and efficient delivery of social goods, Singapore. The only problem with this utopia is that Singapore is not a democracy, it is an authoritarian state. The message is fairly clear. No political agent can afford to foreground a text in abstraction from the context.

To be fair to the AAP, the party wishes to deepen democracy, not replace it. It plans to do so by appealing directly to an inchoate entity called the people. Now, ‘the people’ must be one of the most elaborate political fictions inv­ented by power-holders to legitimise acts of omission and commission. To say ‘Let the people decide’ is ridiculous, declared the distinguished legal luminary, Sir Ivor Jennings, for before the people decide, someone has to decide who the people are. Who are these people who participate in the quick opinion polls that the AAP has been administering anyway?

The worry is that this league of ordinary men is in a hurry, and prefers to bypass institutions, procedures and processes. Regr­ettably, the AAP has shown scant res­pect for the elected assembly in Delhi. If it believes in popular sovereignty, it should have waited for the vote of confidence in the new assembly before rushing to ann­ounce its decision on power and water tariffs. In a constitutional and parliamentary democracy, legislatures are not only law-making bodies. They are representative of sections of public opinion; and they are forums where debates and deliberations highlight various dime­nsions of an issue. Admittedly, legislatures have not been working satisfactorily in India, dominated as they are by the politics of commotion and din. The solution to this malady is not government by executive fiat, but strengthening of legislative procedures.

The key point is that referendums cannot substitute for representative institutions; they can only be a sup­plementary exercise. If the intention is to elicit popular opinion, referendums have to be embedded in informed debates that help clarify various sides of an issue. More importantly, referendums should be adm­inistered by impartial authorities, not by the party that stands to benefit from the results.

The AAP has inaugurated a much-needed turn in Indian politics, but success in the Delhi elections should not blind the party to the need to strengthen institutions, desist from populism, deepen and mature agendas, and above all be sure of what it wants its constituency to be. For if ceos and captains of industry are going to jump onto the bandwagon, the party will not remain ordinary any longer; it may not even appear extraordinary.

(The author is National Fellow, ICSSR, and affiliated fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Teen Murti)