If AAP uses its power and manages to make neo-socialist logic visceral and granular to concerns of everyday life, it could transfer the ownership of nationalism to the citizens instead of politicians
Has the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), with its comprehensive home run at the Delhi Assembly elections, managed to carve an alternative space that may just be a dot at the moment but can be the cure to the fractured disease that the Opposition has become in our country? An antidote rather than being an antithesis? An equaliser in a society that’s predicated on inequity as social, economic and political capital? Owning responsibility than harvesting blame games? Perhaps that’s the reason why the party, while assuming charge for the third time, gave a clarion call for “positive nationalism” and has decided to participate in local self-governance polls across the country in a bit by bit lab experiment of welfarism. It may not be a pyramid yet but AAP is giving a new ring to the bijli, sadak, paani plank of the past and making delivery-oriented governance its new credo, much in line with countries like Denmark and South Korea, where the redress of people’s liveability indices, a happiness project if one could call it that, has changed traditional politics. And in resource-depleted times, where sustainability will be the only measure of a nation’s progress, this approach is set to redefine and reshape protectionism and nationalism as we know it.
Unmistakably, AAP has mastered realpolitik in its third avatar, neutralising the BJP’s campaign missiles with smart electoral strategy. But if it uses its power and manages to make this neo-socialist logic visceral and granular to the concerns of everyday life, then it could transfer the ownership of nationalism to people instead of politicians. This is not going to be an easy battle in deeply divided times where nationalism has been predicated on identity politics, the imaginary fear of the others and the hurt of denial we didn’t know existed. Polarisation and majoritarianism, of the kind that the BJP has encoded through its most repugnant avatars, need counter-strategies to begin with. And when the manifestation of vitriol is through the emotive force of religion, then secularism seems like an angularity than an asset. And in the India of our times, secularism is the new tormentor, the free radical that has emaciated religiosity, a non-belief that has denied us the right to wear it comfortably on our sleeves. Therefore, each Opposition party, which is now tactically avoiding a confrontation with the BJP and refusing to bite the bait that makes the latter look like the victim, is coopting religion, too. AAP has successfully turned religion into a jan dharma of serving the people and communities with its actions, be it on public health, water, education or empowering fee exemptions. However, in the public war of chants and rants, it countered Jai Shri Ram with Jai Bajrangbali, using the image of Ram’s servitor Hanuman. AAP is also using Hanuman as a metaphor for being a devotee of the people, serving with commitment and democratising religion as inclusive and common, pitting the BJP’s negative projection against a positive one. The Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee is doing the same with her Jai Maa Kali slogans in Bengal, invoking a deity which is revered by everybody in that State irrespective of their faith. The Congress, too, is now employing soft Hindutva of its kind. India had so far reconciled itself to a secular public life where ritualism was lived as a daily habit rather than an exhibitionist practice. The BJP has managed to overturn this paradigm, making public symbolism of religion a matter of pride and disowning it as a matter of national shame. Insidiously, it has throttled majoritarian liberalism and compelled political parties to play by the rules of this game. Religion, tragically, is now the domain of tactical warfare and a test of loyalty to the nation, thanks to the BJP. By establishing religion as a tool of political play, it has skillfully exiled secularism and Constitutional values to the domain and responsibility of civil society. This dissociation is significant. Simply because, despite protests, sit-ins and disruptors, there’s no political space for civil movements. As the BJP herds parties into Centre-Right positions, civil movements have become the cultivable space for transformational strategies. The AAP, which was born of such a movement, is then perhaps best placed to re-induct it in a manner that matters most, daily governance. And marry it to the larger reclamation of dharma, that of changing people’s lives. For people give parties the electoral strength to change politics. This could yet reset our fulcrum.
Undoubtedly, the Delhi verdict stands out because it has attempted creating a classless society — elevating standards and quality of Government schools so that their students are mainstreamed better, appointing proficient teachers with the right pay, setting up neighbourhood clinics that have become the first responders in a health crisis, allowing women free mobility without worrying about burdening the family budget, ensuring community-specific projects and doorstep delivery of services, reducing power bills that shows the Government’s intent to plough back its surpluses and enhancing digital access. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal himself astutely asked people to vote for his performance, no matter what religion or political ideology they harboured. This empowerment explains why BJP and Congress supporters, too, voted for AAP, why nationalism as an abstract idea will have to be translated into pride in the city you live in, the street where your home is.
According to a report by McKinsey, such a technique has been used successfully as a governance tool. “In the UK, for instance, the Local Government Association undertook a project to measure how satisfied residents were with their local council’s performance. Their analysis showed that perceived value for the money — essentially, whether residents feel they’re getting a good return on their tax dollars — was by far the most powerful influencer of public satisfaction; it was far more important than the tax levels themselves. Further, perceived value for the money was determined largely by how well residents were informed about local services. Several councils used these insights to make specific improvements; one group launched a ‘cleaner, greener, safer’ public-relations campaign that helped move the council from the bottom 40 per cent of performance satisfaction ratings to the top 10 per cent in less than five years,” the report says.
Aware of its limited territoriality and resources, the Kejriwal Government has worked on smart metrics, gathering public feedback to identify what matters most to citizens and circling out those that have the highest levels of dissatisfaction. Then it graded categories that began with basic infrastructure. Having taken care of those somewhat, it has already prioritised pollution as its next assignment, something for which it has already been criticised but hasn’t forgotten to take up.
Denmark, which is among the top liveability and sustainability indices of the world, is demonstrable proof of the success of a delivery-oriented governance model. The Social Democrats and the Farmers’ Party stood out for their social reform programmes when Adolf Hitler was on the ascendant in Germany. They embodied the power of a representative Parliament against his personality cult that was changing the political template of the times. With time they made the citizen feel valued for all the taxes s/he paid by evolving a governance model responsive to their needs and justifiable to their concerns. This automatically built accountability in systemic processes. And they included women in their growth story from the very beginning. The result? The nation has the highest employment ratio, the highest number of citizens on public allowances, the highest taxes (acceptable because it finances public expenditure), and the highest percentage of the economy ploughed into the public accounts. And it figures among the top 10 in income and education.
Many critics argue that such an approach builds a sense of entitlement, kills enterprise and works only on broad majorities, one that may actually coerce political parties into the game of populism. They may even atrophy on subsequent changes. But in a dynamic such as India’s, welfarism is empowering and encouraging and is needed to level out the basic indices. The application of ingenuity and its incentivisation can happen only when we have crossed this enabling threshold. Change doesn’t happen overnight. And you need role models. But at least a start has been made.
(The writer is Associate Editor, The Pioneer)
