It is now certain that Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal will follow Narendra Modi for a dip in the Varanasi electoral contest, to lend a frisson of excitement to what is generally regarded as a one-horse race. Claiming in Bengaluru on Sunday that the formal announcement would only be made at a rally in the holy city on March 23, the AAP leadership has begun to build up Arvind Kejriwal’s profile as a ‘giant killer’ who humbled the seemingly invincible Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit in December 2013, and dared to publicly speak against Robert Vadra, Mukesh Ambani, and Narendra Modi.
The test for the BJP leadership in Uttar Pradesh, and particularly its spokespersons in Delhi, will be to handle the maverick challenger with dignity, not because he poses a real threat to the Gujarat strongman or his margin of victory, but because he is eccentric enough to seriously vitiate the atmospherics. Since Kejriwal is not fighting the elections to form the Government at the Centre, but exclusively to derail the Modi juggernaut, he will have the luxury to engage in unconventional tactics and reckless antics.
The theatrics in Gujarat and the misconduct that led to damage to public property in Mumbai recently, are only indicative of what the AAP can do to grab public eyeballs. The AAP will love, indeed it will seek, to create a situation in which the BJP appears in bad light, which in this era of instant messaging can promptly be relayed all over the country in real time. Since both Narendra Modi and his principal lieutenant Amit Shah have mastered the art of silence in the face of grave provocations, this may be a policy that the rest of the party should learn to emulate.
It would be churlish to claim that Arvind Kejriwal has totally lost his appeal among the masses in Delhi; elsewhere too he has a novelty value. After his clownish behaviour as the capital’s 49-day Chief Minister and the goon-ish behaviour of his Law Minister, a good part of the committed Congress voter in Delhi who shifted towards the AAP remains loyal to the party; the committed BJP voter who gave the AAP a chance at the State level has bounced back to the BJP. The Delhi parliamentary election is therefore going to be a keenly contested three-sided race once again.
In the rest of the country, Kejriwal attracts fair crowds in many places because of his freshness and powerful oratory. The AAP does not have a base or adequate cadre in most places, and hence cannot make a meaningful difference there. But it articulates the general disillusionment with corruption everywhere and could help consolidate anti-BJP sentiments in the States it visits.
Dismissing the AAP as of no consequence would be a serious mistake; it must be understood as a guerrilla force that has finessed the art of hit-and-run and laying ambush. It is no accident that the AAP has invited Maoist sympathisers like Soni Sori to contest on its ticket in Bastar, Chhattisgarh, and has admitted Sabyasachi Panda, a Maoist with a bounty of Rs5 lakh on his head, into the party. As a party, AAP is committed to undermining the stability of the Indian State.
The possibility that the BJP, under the leadership of Narendra Modi, could provide a strong and stable Government that could help India regain its status in the comity of nations and recover its economic might, is anathema to Arvind Kejriwal and his colleagues and their foreign friends and supporters. They know that time is too short to make an electoral impact at the national level.
Hence, the decision to contest against Narendra Modi outside of Gujarat should be seen as a canny strategy to concentrate energy – and grab national eyeballs – on Kejriwal’s acts of anarchism during the elections. It is difficult to predict what his actions could be, but it is a safe bet that he will make the campaign as muddy as he can.
Already the AAP volunteers have been told to go to Varanasi to prepare for the rally. That this novice party is able to arrange road shows and rallies wherever it goes, and rake in lakhs of rupees in donations every week, gives rise to legitimate suspicions that it is being mentored and provisioned by powerful invisible forces.
Kejriwal does not pose a challenge to Narendra Modi’s stature as a national leader. But he has already made Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi largely invisible in this election, a fact that will be worrying the dynasty spin doctors. By highlighting issues of corruption in every Government and political party in the States he visits, he is performing the role of a political catalyst to consolidate anti-BJP votes in favour of the party that is best placed to defeat the BJP in the State. The 2014 election is not a contest between the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate and a rookie politician. It is an election in which an entirely new entity – a stalker politician – has entered the arena with the aim of queering the pitch for the pre-eminent leader of the Indian political pantheon. The BJP response must be commensurate to the challenge.
Niticentral.com, 17 March 2014
http://www.niticentral.com/2014/03/17/kejriwal-to-muddy-waters-in-varanasi-200654.html