AAP's in a crisis. But don't write it off just yet

The wheel has turned full circle for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Once it was a full-throated movement against corruption, today its top leaders are entangled in multiple allegations of graft. AAP once hurled accusations at a range of Congress leaders from Sheila Dikshit to P Chidambaram. Today, it too faces charges of wrongdoing.No wonder its opponents are gloating. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has long regarded AAP as its peskiest challenger, sees an opportunity to finally crush it. The Congress, which holds AAP responsible for the downfall of the United Progressive Alliance government through the India Against Corruption agitation, has no sympathy for Arvind Kejriwal’s party. With Delhi’s deputy chief minister and one of its most high-profile leaders, Manish Sisodia, jailed, AAP is today facing the biggest setback in its decade-old existence.Yet even if the party is in crisis, the original idea of AAP remains extremely important. As India becomes more urbanised, a party of urban middle-class interests which functions as a credible alternative to the political establishment remains a crucial need. medium98415199The urban professional and educated citizen is badly squeezed in trying to find space in today’s politics. There is the ruling BJP, a majoritarian force with nativist religious nationalism as its core. There is Congress with its entitled leadership, burdened with the baggage of the ancien regime. There are the regional potentates, each rooted in their local identities and family cults. In this scenario, where can the educated middle-class citizen, without access to either money or muscle power and reluctant to focus on identity issues, find a voice?It was precisely because it offered a platform for educated citizens to enter politics that AAP was initially so attractive to many. It was a voluntarist NGO-cum-activist movement that set itself the task of creating alternative politics. A wide variety joined Kejriwal’s party in the initial years from lawyer Prashant Bhushan to bankers like Meera Sanyal.However, once AAP began to contest elections in earnest, the harsh realities of electoral politics threatened to swamp the party. Many of its original members left, frustrated by the party’s ‘high command’ style decision-making. Once a symbol of middle-class hope, it looked increasingly cynical. The party was forced to compromise on its early principles, began to appeal to vote banks and kept promising freebies. Kejriwal had once declared that he was a non-believer; by 2020, he was a Hanuman bhakt and by 2022, he was invoking the imagery of a modern-day Krishna vanquishing Kansa.Battle for survivalStarved of resources and bearing the brunt of hostile state action, AAP has fought elections with one hand tied behind its back. Between March 2018 to 2022, almost 50% of electoral bonds funds flowed to the ruling BJP, according to Election Commission data. The Congress over time has created individual leaders with enormous assets and regional parties can raise resources in their states. But AAP has very little access to funds. It also faces the wrath of entrenched players determined to deny the upstart newbie any space.Yet at the same time, AAP’s existence has enabled talented young politicians like Raghav Chadha and Atishi, who perhaps could never have found opportunities in mainstream parties, to find space in public life. Sisodia and team have been able to create an administrative model based on delivering quality public education and health. medium98415210A majority of AAP MLAs are political first-timers. By energetically fighting local body elections, AAP not only dominates Delhi’s municipal corporation but also has a presence in city bodies in Gujarat. It runs governments in Delhi and Punjab and opened an account in Goa with two seats.Kejriwal has consistently punched above his weight, first challenging PM Narendra Modi in his Varanasi constituency in 2014, where he lost by a huge margin but was far ahead of the other contenders. In 2022, after a hard-fought battle in the BJP’s fortress of Gujarat, AAP managed to get only five seats. While AAP may not yet be challenging the establishment, at least it has brought a whole new cadre of leaders into rigidly status-quoist Indian politics.That’s why AAP must not be written off in a hurry. A striking finding of a recent India Today-Axis poll showed respondents saying Kejriwal was most suited to leading an Opposition alliance. As many as 24% chose Kejriwal as the Opposition alliance leader, while only 13% opted for Rahul Gandhi.AAP lacks a nationwide organisational base, its leadership is depleted and today it is facing severe odds. But even as it battles an existential crisis, the idea of AAP remains of huge value. Perhaps this crisis could encourage it to rediscover its original voluntarist spirit and return to what it once was, a citizen-driven challenge to established politics.Read more from the author here.