A political start-up

Evaluating Delhi government's first year

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in Delhi has now been in office for a year. Certainly, the fears, born of its earlier abortive stint, it would be unable to undertake the hard task of actual governance have been laid to rest. But how has it actually performed? Has it managed to distinguish itself successfully, as a political start-up of a sort, from older and more established parties? Has it been a disruptor - in both the negative and the positive sense of the word? Does its governance in Delhi have any characteristics that it could use in its attempt to scale up nationally, starting with the Punjab Assembly elections next year? Some of these questions can be at least partially answered after a year.

While Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has not abandoned all his street-fighting instincts, it is clear that he has been willing to pick and choose his battles. He has picked fights with the Bharatiya Janata Party, its central government and its municipal corporations often enough - many of the disagreements have been over the Centre's control of the Delhi Police and the Delhi Lieutenant Governor's power over some aspects of state policy. The unnecessary showdown with the municipal corporations has led to some parts of Delhi suffering sub-optimal service delivery, and Mr Kejriwal should reconsider his approach. But it is clear that he is not willing to provoke confrontations with the Delhi power distribution companies or the water utility, even though he could well have argued that his old claims about inflated power tariffs, for one, have been justified by subsequent investigations.

While cheaper utilities definitely continue to be on the government's agenda, that has not been the main focus of its efforts. The AAP has another ideological string to its bow: radical decentralisation of governance. Mr Kejriwal has often claimed that this is one part of what sets his party apart from others, and some aspects of this are being put into practice in Delhi. Certainly, his government's initiative to set up community health centres where tests and medicines are made available to locals is an interesting idea, and whether they are indeed more accountable and thus efficient over time is something that will have to be studied. The government has claimed to have responded to the dengue epidemic with over 1,000 more hospital beds, although the effects of this are yet to be seen in full. Financial allocations for the education sector have seen a significant increase in the AAP government's first Budget - a move that should result in better access to education. Encouraging reports have also emerged about its focus on primary schools, though the education department's confrontational approach to "management quotas" in private schools might backfire - and not survive the legal challenge.

On the negative side, progress on transforming Delhi's physical infrastructure has been slow. The closure of the bus rapid transit system, instead of a study of whether its failure could be rectified at a lower cost to the exchequer and to commuters, did not send a good signal. The proposed return of the odd-even road rationing scheme in April conceals the fact that, even a year after the formation of the new government, Delhi's residents still await a comprehensive approach to scaling up public transport in the city - although it has been reported that one is in the works. Certainly, Mr Kejriwal has claimed that flyovers have been completed under-budget, freeing up resources for other work - but it is uncertain how much of this is due to his government's action. Overall, while the signs are encouraging, much more systemic planning for the transformation of Delhi is needed - and the AAP's core ideology of decentralisation suggests these plans should be thrown open for public discussion and comment at an earlier rather than later stage.