What BJP did wrong, AAP did right

The results of the Delhi Assembly polls were hidden yet legible in a tweet even before they were out. Shortly after the polling ended, a Delhiite (as Delhi inhabitants are known) declared on Twitter that during the 2014 general elections, he was a voter and admirer of Indian Prime Minister and Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) posterboy Narendra Modi, but during this year’s Delhi state elections, he will support the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), because no one should get absolute power.

I could end this piece right here. This tweet says a lot about what led to the lopsided outcome of Delhi elections, in favour of AAP.

I’ve never been a great fan of AAP’s understanding of political processes. I’ve been a bigger critic of the post-Atal Bihari Vajpayee BJP. But this Delhi election was a turnaround story for both the major players in the game: the BJP and the AAP, considering that the Grand Old Party of Indian politics, ironically, the oldest among these all, was not even in the competition. The BJP left no stone unturned in committing political harakiri; AAP succeeded till the victory lap in keeping calm and displaying grace.

The BJP’s lost became imminent a couple of days after they announced their candidate for the post of Delhi chief minister. In ex-supercop Kiran Bedi lay AAP’s road to victory. Once partners in the India Against Corruption movement that raged the country in 2012, primarily at Central Delhi’s iconic Ramlila Maidan, Bedi and now Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal stood united under one flag: that majestic Tricolour of India. But in the race to the Delhi Assembly, destiny pitted them against one another. At first, Bedi appeared to bring some promise for governance-starved Delhi, in the shape of a strong and decisive former police officer from the elite Indian Police Service (IPS). She exuded that much-needed confidence that Delhi’s increasingly-insecure womenfolk yearned for, for their safety on the streets round the clock. With over 40 years of experience behind her as a law-and-order specialist, reformer of prisons and prisoners, strict disciplinarian, this first woman IPS officer was the role model of every little girl of my generation. She is known to have towed away and ticketed former PM (another iron lady) Indira Gandhi’s car when she found it parked at the wrong place. A lawn tennis champion, Bedi was everything that the voter “should” have loved and voted for. Then what went wrong for the BJP? So awfully wrong, that not only did BJP lose the election under her leadership, but also lost the constituency from where she was fielded? She was hoisted from east Delhi’s Krishna Nagar, considered to be a “safe” seat for the BJP as one of their most popular faces has won from there five times. He also campaigned for her. Despite that, she lost to AAP. Here’s why.

Each time BJP opened its mouth, it made AAP look good

While Bedi looked all fancy and promising to us, she became the reason why BJP’s own cadre got offended. Workers of organised political parties invest decades of their life hoping to reach the top positions in electoral contests one day. When Bedi landed in the BJP via a parachute on the wind of her tweets reeking of sycophancy towards PM Modi and BJP National President Amit Shah, it was clear to the rank and file of the party that she is an “imported” troubleshooter for the party. She has not worked her way up the ladder unlike them and it is her persona and not her personality that is being hardsold to the masses for want of votes. Political parties can never hope to win an election when they offend and distance themselves from their cadre. It is this cadre that will walk the streets and convince people to vote for a candidate. And this cadre can jolly well surreptitiously convince people to vote against its own party should it get offended by its arrogance.

Perhaps that is what happened to Bedi. A wrong choice led to the loss of a bastion. A communication gap with the party cadre led to severe embarrassment for the party’s CM candidate losing her seat. Wishful thinking led to Bedi’s maiden electoral contest becoming a bad memory.

Now the second part of the story – AAP’s victory. They played all their cards right. They worked very, very, very, very and very hard on this election. Much against their party cadre’s wishes and suggestions, the top leadership decided against entering the fray in other battles like Haryana, which elected a BJP government in November. Despite Haryana being his home state, Kejriwal chose not to meddle his way into a battle where his soldiers didn’t look strong enough to don the armour and fight the knights of the BJP, who were at that point riding on a wave of successive successes in other states. They focused only on Delhi and gave it their all. They organised Jan Sabhas (congregations); went into streets and nooks and crannies; promised freebies like 700 litres of free water in every metered household and slashing of power bills by half. They connected with the Aam Aadmi like no one had done before. So this way, even the khaas aadmi voted for the Aam Aadmi.

There’s a sidenote to these two stories. What BJP did wrong, AAP did right. PM Modi gave Delhi’s victory on a platter to Kejriwal when he donned that self-obsessed suit with Narendra Damodardas Modi woven into its warp and weft. It is said to be made with Holland and Sherry fabric and made at Saville Row with a price tag of Rs 1 million. An autorickshaw driver asked me: “Madam ji, Modi ji ek taraf kehte hain ke main chai wala hoon aur doosri taraf 10 lakh ka suit pehente hain (One one hand Modi claims to be a tea-seller and on the other he wears a suit worth Rs 1 million)?” Cut to Kejriwal. In a TV interview, the interviewer pointed out two holes on the shoulders of his cheap-looking maroon sweater. And his love for cheap looking sandals and ill-fitting trousers is well-known. In a nutshell, he even dresses like the aam aadmi.

During the campaign, the BJP spared no effort in choosing offensive and off-putting words for Kejriwal and AAP. PM Modi called him badnaseeb (unlucky), sought to send him off to the jungles where a Naxalite movement is raging and attacking the Indian State; his constituency opponent, BJP’s Nupur Sharma, compared him with a monkey; he was termed toxic; bhagorha (runaway/fugitive) some said he was like a snake. But neither Kejriwal nor his colleagues uttered one word to hurt or offend the BJP or even give it back to them. This won him sympathy and tagged the BJP as arrogant after they had tasted victory in successive provincial battles.

In politics, as in life, while it is important to work hard, it is more important to work smart. Each time BJP opened its mouth, it made AAP look good. They didn’t ever imagine that they could lose, that too in Delhi where their posterboy lives currently. They conveniently forgot that AAP was quietly working on the ground while they were gazing at the stars and danced an intoxicated dance under the influence of arrogance. People have started questioning the performance of the Modi government in its nine months of office. Though, I contend that for a mammoth country like India, nine months is too short and impatient a time frame to judge the efficiency of a government, but when elections take place every other month, the current government’s performance is bound to be reflected in the results that ensue.