It is ironic that the same electronic media that did not have the political foresight to grasp the intensity of the changing winds before AAP’s victory in Delhi, now seems over anxious about it. Just 15 years ago, not many people outside the Indian capital would have known about the swift changes taking place in Delhi politics, because there were no 24/7 private TV news channels to show the AAP’s effectiveness nationwide. But today those channels are showing how the new CM Arvind Kejriwal is using participatory politics in taking every decision by asking the common man who helped his party come to power. His swift efforts to fight corruption and also to help lower middle-class families by reducing the rates for water and electricity have touched the common man. People outside New Delhi have started to believe that corruption-free politics is possible, with the help of strong-willed people who are honest in their efforts to bring about change. The common man is watching how the AAP chief minister, unlike previous ones, wants TV channels and affected people to conduct sting operations on the corrupt bureaucrats who are still taking bribes.
The visual media, unknowingly, has been beaming hope to the common man that not all is lost in India yet and that despite all the hurdles, a rallying point has emerged in Delhi that can eventually bring together people who are honest, anti-corrupt and want to change the style of Indian politics forever. I said ‘unknowingly’ because the media itself keeps questioning AAP leaders as to why they have decided to run in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.The media keeps forgetting that AAP is being seen by the people as a common binding factor that cuts across the divide based on caste, religion and language and has rendered irrelevant the traditional vote banks, created and exploited by the powerhungry politicians.
In the earlier days of independent India, it was said that democratic processes would put an end to these unique divisions, which were exploited by the British to perpetuate their rule. However, in the process of empowering the masses, politicians turned them into vote banks. Today, all political parties openly denounce the politics of cultivating ‘vote banks’ and yet overtly or covertly practice it in their own constituencies.
The Congress, which played a crucial role in the freedom struggle, was the natural choice of many Indians for several elections held after Independence. But then the Congress domination was shaken up in the 1967 elections by the rise of regional opposition parties in various states. And by 1989, the regional opposition parties had ended the dominance of the Congress party in Indian politics.
In the post-Congress era the effective balance of power between the Centre and the states shifted decisively toward the states. The reason was simple and fundamental. The regional parties either dominated or became significant players in a majority of Indian states and gained decisive influence as to who governs at the Centre. However, what did not change was the vote-bank politics. Votes were still being sought in the name of religion, caste or language.
Then came the economic reforms introduced by the Congress which created a critical mass of lower and middle class of almost 400 million people. But no one realised that this better-off middle class could become another vote bank based on class in a country also divided between haves and have-nots. And ironically, that aspirational middle class created by the Congress eventually became allergic to that party’s feudal politics. People, who always saw the Congress as an inclusive party, began looking at it as a non-inclusive party run by a feudal family, one that had not disproved any of the corruption charges against it.
So when the AAP arrived on the scene, this middle class, besides being unhappy with the Congress, was also not happy with BJP leaders such as Narendra Modi whose slogan was ‘Hindu nationalism’ instead of ‘Indian nationalism’, and whose party also had corruption charges sticking to it.
Before the AAP came to power in Delhi, the media was ridiculing it in the same way as it is doing now about AAP’s ambition of fielding candidates for the Lok Sabha elections in 15 to 20 states. The irony is that it is the media itself that first neglected it and then propelled the party to such heights that now the common man across the country is joining hands with the AAP in an effort to make a difference on the national level. But now it seems it is the media’s responsibility to treat AAP as a serious contender in the 2014 general elections and press it for its stances on the national economic and foreign policy issues, and at the same time push Congress to abandon dynasty and BJP to shun its narrow parochial policies.
(Author/news analyst Ravi M. Khanna is now freelancing from New Delhi after his 24-year stint with Voice Of America in Washington DC as its South Asia bureau chief)
Feedback: ravimohankhanna@gmail.com
