AAP as the Alternative to BJP? Two Thoughtful Explorations

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Sukla Sen

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Mar 16, 2022, 5:40:14 AM3/16/22
to foil-l


This time, in Punjab, the AAP could sell a dream.
A major reason is the (huge) disenchantment of the voters with the tried and tested ones.
It failed in nearby Uttarakhand or even Goa.

Far more importantly, the AAP, in the recent past, has no track record of squarely opposing the BJP on any major "national" issue.
In fact, it has, largely, gone with the BJP.

Supported the (virtual) scrapping of the Article 370, permitted filing of sedition case against Umar Khalid, more or less echoed Modi's concern(!) as regards the breach of his security in Punjab during poll campaign.
To be fair, it offers an apolitical (or "post-ideology"?) model of corruption-free good governance. Kejriwal has time and again asserted that a state government can garner enough resources if there's no systemic leakage.
In order to make sense of its (apolitical) politics, one has to keep in mind, at one point of time not too long ago, it had floated the idea of "Modi as PM and Kejri as CM", which they'd, of course, soon retract facing huge backlash. (Ref.: <https://m.timesofindia.com/india/aap-removes-modi-for-pm-arvind-for-cm-banner-from-website-after-social-media-outrage/articleshow/45073870.cms>.)

Anyway, how long - in Modi's New India, even this His Majesty's loyal opposition would be allowed to meaningfully operate remains to be seen.

I/II. <<...The AAP speaks the language of governance. It belongs to a post-ideological world. But it is ideology that speaks of the politics of a party. Of course, a government should not be corrupt. But the political is always contested. Who contests governance and corruption? What is, then, the politics of the AAP? Across the world, governments that ban corruption happen to be police-states. Democratic states should do more, they should be able to tell us what they stand for.

It is precisely here that the AAP has faltered. It has not taken a stand on inalienable human rights, and certainly not on the right to protest the anti-CAA agitation, Shaheen Bagh, the attack on the students and faculty in Jawaharlal Nehru University in January 2020 by goons, and on manufactured communal riots in Delhi in February 2020. Can we trust it to safeguard the rights of citizens? This is what democratic governments are supposed to do. Let us not mistake the matter, authoritarian governments provide their people with social goods as a matter of social policy. What they do not do is protect basic rights and freedoms.

Worryingly on crucial issues, the AAP falls within the provenance of right-wing conservatism: public exhibition of religious rituals and Hindu religious imagery. The party articulates and implements anxious expressions of an overripe Indian nationalism, such as desh-bhakti in schools. Unthinking and excessive nationalism deflects reasoned consideration of issues, such as justice, which is crucial to the project of living together in a political community...>>


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