Aam Aadmi Party – Third Myth

Sunil Rajguru, who is a kindred spirit, has written an article which is in line with some of our own theories. He beat us to the punch and kudos to him. He has listed seven myths about the Aam Aadmi party. Here we are going to go through each myth and add our own opinion to it.

An Assembly success can be replicated in the Lok Sabha.

Parties successful in one Assembly find it very tough to branch out nationally. Just because the AAP has been successful in the Delhi Assembly (people keep missing the main point that it came second and not first in the Assembly) doesn't mean it will translate into Lok Sabha success.
The Maharashtra Gomantak Party, the Asom Gana Parishad and the Telugu Desam Party all have had greater Assembly debuts. But the party to consider is the BSP. The BSP saw spectacular success in UP but failed to go national despite both Kanshi Ram and Mayawati trying their best in other states and there being a readymade Dalit vote bank all across India.
Delhi has the smallest of Assembly segments where an intense campaign can work. In comparison, Lok Sabha constituencies are huge and the AAP will have to fight it out for every single one.

One other example that Sunil missed out was that of Shiv Sena. They have dominated the Mumbai politics for decades but have not been able to duplicate the same success at the state level let alone nationally.

In Delhi, AAP’s campaign was aided by an extreme anti incumbency mood. The BJP did not offer any real alternative until the last moment (and because of that they almost pulled out a victory). AAP had almost a year to campaign and thus could hold those street corner meetings and a door to door campaign. Small size of the state and a homogenous, readymade liberal voter base helped them in garnering close to 30% of the votes. To replicate this model of campaign on a national level is not possible for already established parties let alone an upstart group like the AAP. In 2009, Congress spent close to 450 crores and BJP spent 250 crores on the general elections. Pragmatically speaking, volunteers and small donations cannot match that kind of money (I do not like the big money dominating politics but that is unavoidable).

Kejriwal is their star campaigner (more so because the others suffer from the disease of saying the wrong things at the wrong time) and he went against a mild mannered Dr. Harshvardhan and maligned Sheila Dixit. On a national level, he will be pitted against Narendra Modi whose election rallies have unnerved even the Congress. It will be pragmatism versus populism. It will be vision versus lack thereof. It will be self reliance versus begging. It will be pride versus victimhood. It will be nationalism versus self loathing. It will be roaring self confidence versus whimpering self doubt. It will be “I am responsible” versus “You are guilty”. Believe me, if it comes to Modi versus Kejriwal, it will not even be a contest.

The success in Delhi was a huge surprise to the AAP as well. That is obvious because the way their representatives were behaving after the results came out. There were not prepared for any eventuality. They had not considered all or any possibilities. Even now, it does not look like they have a plan. They are just winging it as the day goes by. Does this sound to you like a national party? No matter how hard the Indian media screams, a crow can never walk like a peacock. What worked in Delhi will never work at the national level.

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