T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan: Arvind Kejriwal's Padosan moment

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has disturbed the old equilibrium, perhaps permanently; and the middle class, at least, is very perturbed by what is happening to its certainties.

But, as I explained last month in this column, in order to stay on in business, AAP will have to make constant adjustments to its strategies and tactics because it has to move between the gravitational pull of two very large parties, namely, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party.

So whatever it does - and, more importantly, whichever way in which it does it - AAP will end up adding to overall instability because all parties with whom it competes will constantly shift their positions, at least between now and the general elections in May, because even very small shifts in positions, made through very little effort, can fetch large political rewards.

Mr Kejriwal showed how earlier this week. He decided to dump the middle class and go for what Rahul Gandhi calls the "sandwich" class, the class that has just come out of poverty but can slip back at any time.

This explains why Mr Kejriwal is adopting right morality and Left wing economics. This is entirely consistent with the preferences of the sandwich class and those just above it. The mass of urban voters dwells in that income segment.

Much has been said and written about what enables Mr Kejriwal's successes and, as is always the case in such matters all views are valid (which actually also makes all views invalid!)

That aside, it is well known that all new men/women arriving on the scene and determined to change the rules of the game always enjoy an advantage over the old timers who tend to be complacent. But because the new boys don't play by the old rules, they can't be gamed by the incumbent players.

So whether it was Keynes challenging classical economics or Mark Greatbatch inverting the 50-over cricket match by slogging in the first 15 overs, the story is the same. These people don't just reject the old rules; they also make the new ones which are an improvement over the old ones.

Modus ponen, modus tollen
To the tsunami of moral, political, economic and sociological explanations adduced so far, let me add a very small drop from propositional logic. As we will see, it applies to all activists and the changes they induce.

There is a technique in logic that uses affirmation for, as it were, affirming. Thus, if P implies Q and if someone insists that P is true or is happening, then Q automatically becomes true or happens. These propositions are called Modus Ponens.

The opposite form, Modus Tollen also holds good. So, if P implies "Not Q" is true, and P is asserted, then "Not Q" is also true.

In plain language, suppose someone says I will wear a T-shirt if the sun comes up and the sun comes up, then he will wear the T-shirt.

In the reverse, if he says I will wear a T-shirt if the sun comes up and he is not wearing a T-shirt, it means the sun has not come up.

Activist modus
Now see how similar this is to the way in which all activists operate and force changes in laws, politics, economics etc.

In the context of, say, the sexual harassment law, it is somehow turning out to be the case that a mere allegation is enough to create the belief that the allegation is true. In terms of modus ponens, this would go as follows:

"If there is an allegation (P) it must be true (Q); there is indeed an allegation (P); therefore it is true (Q)."

Mr Kejriwal has adopted the same technique. His reasoning is as follows.
"If I say it, it must be true.
I say it.
Therefore, it is true."

What that "it" is doesn't matter.

What this does in some contexts is to transform our form of jurisprudence from the Anglo-Saxon one where the prosecution has to prove guilt of the accused to the Roman law one where the accused has to prove his innocence. Note that the same facility is not available to the others.

Why does such a strategy by activists succeed? Because they have the moral high ground. Whether it is on gender issues, environmental issues, corruption, you name it, they do have the upper hand.

And this happens largely because the ancien regime is too busy enjoying itself to respond to the needs of people or even of intellectual disciplines. Activism would never be there if governments were more responsive. And there lies the paradox: though higher government responsiveness can prevent activism, it also involves means governments turning activist, as Indira Gandhi had done during 1969-73.

An intuitive, if not formal, understanding of this perhaps informs Mr Kejriwal's actions whereby, even though in government, he would prefer not to discard his activism, which is his Unique Identification Number.

But as the song in Padosan goes, at some point the people will say:
"Ya chatur bolo ya goda bolo;
yeh chatur-goda, chatur-goda kya re?"