Losing the plot

AAP should focus more on governance

At least for some of those who had voted for the Aam Aadmi Party, or AAP, last February in the Delhi Assembly elections, recent happenings will feel like a betrayal. The party, for good or bad, pitched itself as the representative of a new kind of politics - one that was self-consciously decentralised, that returned vigour to the processes of democratic politics, that was inclusive and participatory where other parties were exclusive. But those ideas received a jolt by the events of the weekend and the manner in which the AAP's leaders, including two of its best-known public faces - Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav - were dismissed from the party's national executive. On Sunday, Mr Bhushan was also removed from the national disciplinary committee of the party, a body which he led. In addition, in an ironic twist, the party's internal lok pal - a former navy admiral, L Ramdas - was replaced. Admiral Ramdas's term had technically expired in 2013, but it was difficult to see this removal as unrelated to the party leadership's desire to ensure that nothing came in the way of its decision to expel the leaders. The reason this is ironic, of course, is that the AAP was born out of a struggle for a national lok pal - and yet its internal crisis has now revealed how difficult it is for a lok pal to alone act as a check on power.

The point is not whether Mr Bhushan and Mr Yadav, the two most visible dissenters, deserve to have action taken against them for disciplinary infractions. They may or may not. The point is that the methods taken have struck many observers as fundamentally unjust and even undemocratic. That this should have come from a party that made a big fuss out of decentralising democracy, down to the point of having individual constituency manifestos, has surprised many. Surely, a key element of the promise of decentralised democracy should be the ability to have varied points of view within the party. The party may or may not suffer electorally from the departure of these leaders; but it will certainly find itself suffering in public estimation. It has lost the moral high ground it occupied after its unprecedented sweep of the Delhi Assembly elections just a short time ago.

The underlying reasons for the party's internal tumult are many. One is the fundamental push in Indian politics, as it now stands, towards one-individual political forces. When the AAP asked for votes in Delhi, it did so in the name of Arvind Kejriwal. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Delhi chief minister thinks his writ should run. He has shown himself to be cast in the same mould as other powerful chief ministers - whether Nitish Kumar or Naveen Patnaik or Jayalalithaa or Mamata Banerjee. Indeed this is the mould that has also produced Narendra Modi - though, again, it was hoped by some that the AAP would somehow break the mould. That said, the true damage to the AAP would come if this political drama took the focus away from Delhi's needs. The party has been given five years by the city-state's electorate in the hope that it will deliver. Internal politicking should not distract the party from its agenda - for failure to govern will be even more damaging than was this weekend's undemocratic display.