Editorial: The Kejriwal comeuppance

There’s a reason why several sections are enjoying the comeuppance served to Arvind Kejriwal in the Delhi Assembly elections last Saturday. During the period 2010 to 2014, the crafty former bureaucrat rode to national prominence on the back of Anna Hazare’s Gandhian creds and his own well-funded social media campaign to destroy the mandate of the UPA II government. Claiming to be an anti-corruption crusader, he collaborated with the Sangh Parivar in mobilising middle-class anger against the Manmohan Singh government.

In doing so, he inveigled himself into the reckoning as the champion of middle-of-the-road politics. But he also cleared the path for the coming of Narendra Modi at the Centre and served as a stalking horse for the Sangh Parivar. But he grew further than his sponsors planned, and comrades wanted and it was given that the enemies he made during his 10 years in power would inevitably plot his downfall. That his downfall did come at the hands of the Sangh Parivar and that it came amid corruption allegations against himself and his government, and that it came about due to the Congress cutting into his vote is one delicious irony.

Today, although pundits are feigning to be surprised by the Aam Aadmi Party’s defeat, what chances did it really have? At the best of times during its 10 years in power, despite having an unheard-of majority in the Assembly, its governance was always a hobbled horse. The BJP government at the Centre used the Lieutenant Governor and the police to keep its former puppet in check. In its last term, AAP was forced to run a lame-duck administration for well over a year if you consider just the limitations imposed on Arvind Kejriwal’s functioning as chief minister in jail and upon release on bail. He was barred from visiting the Chief Minister’s Office and the Delhi Secretariat and was not allowed to sign official files without the Lieutenant Governor’s approval. Kejriwal was thus forced into the expedient of stepping aside and making Atishi Marlena as some sort of a stand-in chief minister. Proxy strategies do not work in India’s electoral practice. So, AAP went into this election badly handicapped and predictably came second.

But elections are about governance. Now that the BJP has come back to power after 26 years, the people of Delhi look to the Modi-led government at the Centre to cut out the politicking it indulged in while AAP was in office and assist the local administration in attending to the pressing problems the capital territory faces. The three top priorities for the incoming administration include improving the air quality, preventing urban flooding and reviving the entire Yamuna riverfront. Hopefully, it will retain and build upon some initiatives taken by the AAP administration, especially the mohalla clinics and refurbishment of government schools.

People do not vote for ideologies in local elections; they vote for better services. There is nothing in this victory that proves any of the wider points the Sangh Parivar tends to make. The people of Delhi grew tired of Arvind Kejriwal’s perpetual siege mentality and plumped for some everyday governance. It is now for the incoming BJP administration to elicit the cooperation of the same-hued governments of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh in tackling the air quality problem in Delhi. At the same time, the BJP-led government at the Centre will now hopefully refrain from using the stubble-burning issue to toy with the AAP government in Punjab and instead win its cooperation in the matter.