Aam Aadmi Party – Second 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.

AAP and BJP share the same voter base.

The Indian middle class voted NDA1 to power and it powered the anti-corruption and anti-rape agitations. When Kejriwal was on the verge of launching the AAP, then there were a good number of people who loved both the BJP and AAP. But things ended there.
The AAP adopted a Communist Manifesto and campaigned in the jhuggi jhopdis of Delhi. An example is how Kejriwal seems more sympathetic to auto drivers rather than auto commuters.
The middle class is a pampered lot and have no need for freebies and are getting alienated from the AAP.
Then there's Kejriwal meeting a cleric who issued a fatwa against Taslima Nasreen and Prashant Bhushan saying it's OK for Kashmir to separate from India: All that happens to be the exact opposite of the BJP ideology!
The AAP will eat heavily into the vote share of the Congress and the CPM with whom they have great ideological similarities.

There is some overlap in the BJP and AAP voter base. And this is what is feeding into the media frenzy. Both have supporters in the middle class. However, the great Indian middle class has subdivisions. We have the pseudo-secular liberal middle class who think they are above everyone else. This section of people stays in walled compounds passing judgments on those who are more in tune with ground realities. These are the people who are beholden to a strong sense of self entitlement and constantly demand special treatment based on their “connections”. To assuage some of that guilt (in my opinion) they often go out and support leftist causes. The second section is Hindu conservatives who clearly seem to have a better understanding of ground realities and are god fearing, temple going patriots. This section of the middle class Indians are dedicated BJP supporters and are not going to change their votes because the prejudiced and biased Indian media told them to do so. The BJP CAN break away voters from the former while holding on to their base. It is because as soon as these hypocritical liberals realize that the AAP manifesto is nothing but a Communist manifesto with a different name and those policies are going hurt them in the pocket, they will be forced to reconsider.

The semi-urban and rural voters have no way to connect to AAP. Anna Hazare’s movement was of a different kind and it also had time to connect with small town India. AAP does not have time and have to behave like a political party rather than a movement. They will find it difficult to get similar support as they did in their activist avatar.

Sunil is right in saying that the AAP ended up appealing to the same vote bank as that of all the non-BJP parties. Pandering to the Muslims removed any doubt to AAP’s plan of action. Now they have criminals from JD(U) joining the party. Is there any doubt that these guys are just another vote-bank political party and Kejriwal is another Nitish Kumar?

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