The tumult in the Aam Aadmi Party has undeniably created a crisis of image for its leader, Arvind Kejriwal. It also poses a challenge to him to address the issues raised explicitly or implicitly by the quartet of rebels – Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav, Anand Kumar and Ajit Jha. Apart from clearly marking the limits beyond which dissent becomes unacceptable, Kejriwal has to dispel the fog of suspicion internal conflicts create in any party, accommodate or synthesise opposing views, build a bridge between leaders and volunteers, and define AAP’s position on the Indian ideological spectrum.
It’s absurd to believe that dissent could involve scheming against the party, or even publically airing views inimical to its interests, as the Bhushans – Shanti and Prashant – seem to have. Nor should internal power struggles, inevitable in any party, justify wrecking its poll prospects. Considering Bhushan Jr discouraged volunteers from campaigning for AAP, and Bhushan Sr openly expressed his preference for Kiran Bedi, the anger against them in the party is understandable.
To make an exception for them would have set a precedent for others to emulate in the future, and rendered the leadership susceptible to the charge of having different yardsticks for judging those who donate lavishly to the party kitty, as Bhushan Sr did by writing a cheque of Rs 1 crore in 2013. In his speech to the party's National Council on March 28, Kejriwal did tacitly outline the limits of dissent.
But for it to have resonance among volunteers he must address the issue in public forums, which he has presumably shunned to remain insulated from the singeing blowback of the internecine conflict. But the beating his image has taken among sections of AAP supporters, portrayed as he has been to them as a dictator-in-the-making. This charge has come to acquire tenability in the context of the overwhelming majority AAP has in the Delhi assembly.
Key feature
However, disagreement has been the defining aspect of AAP’s architecture. The quartet was decidedly not the only dissenters, despite their best efforts to project themselves thus. For instance, Kumar Vishwas differed from others on the party’s ideological lurch towards left-of-centre. From August, he had distanced himself from the party, but never vented his outrage openly and consistently spurned efforts of rebels to join them.
However, in January, he vigorously campaigned for the party and, though the English-speaking analysts tend to dismiss him as a lightweight in comparison to Bhushan and Yadav, he is infinitely a bigger crowd-puller than them. Vishwas’s dissent did not alarm the AAP leadership because it never assumed a sinister dimension. Might not Kejriwal think of disclosing the process through which decisions are taken, particularly those which were voted upon?
Nevertheless, the internecine war in AAP will have bred suspicion in the party. There were activists whom the quartet of rebels brought into the party. Yet not all of them will hook their fortunes to the Bhushan-Yadav bandwagon, either because of their own determination of which side is best for their interests or because they were disappointed at the manner in which the duo widened the chasm in the party.
Silence not an option
It is also true that a few of them could have refrained from being outspoken in their criticism of Bhushan-Yadav out of civility or respect for their personal relationship or to maintain their position of neutrality, hoping not to get caught in the crossfire between the warring factions. However, AAP’s impulse would be to doubt their loyalty to the party. In this era of miniature cameras and taping devices, AAP might even think of them as potential moles who could leak confidential discussions and political blueprints.
It is here Kejriwal must step in to ensure suspicion doesn’t become endemic in the party. He has to only look at some of his trusted lieutenants to draw confidence – some of the 12 members who comprised the Delhi Election Campaign Group, which spearheaded AAP’s bid to win Delhi back, were close to or had good relations with Bhushan and Yadav. Over the months, they pulled away from Bhushan and Yadav, whom they did not think were immersed in working for the party’s victory.
For instance, journalist Ashish Khetan is said to have been fielded from the Lok Sabha constituency in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections at Bhushan’s suggestion. Not only did he play a stellar role in executing the Delhi Dialogue programme, which rallied the Delhi electorate behind the party, he also subsequently emerged as among the more strident critics of Bhushan.
This is why the removal of Atishi Marlena from the panel of party spokespersons has sent confusing signals all around. Articulate and savvy on TV, she seems to have deliberately kept herself under the radar, neither speaking in favour of Yadav and Bhushan, who were credited to have brought her into the party, nor against them. It is impossible to determine whether she would walk out of the party or stay behind. Yet it is to people such as Merlena, understandably befuddled and nervous about their own futures, to whom Kejriwal should reach out.
Attempts to dispel suspicion are vital because power, as we know, always triggers opposition, creates its anti-thesis. In the ambience of suspicion people are loathe to voice their disagreement. It curbs a free flow of ideas, necessary for any political outfit to be creative. Opposition then becomes clandestine. In accommodating divergences, whether of ideas or class or caste or language, AAP would assume a personality which was the principal reason behind the durability of the Congress.
Tangle of competing interests
This is not to say Kejriwal has not been accommodating of competing interests in the party. For instance, members of the DECG were opposed to fielding Pankaj Pushkar from the Timarpur Assembly seat, largely because his chance of victory was deemed remote through internal surveys. Since Yadav was keen on Pushkar’s candidature, Kejriwal prevailed over the DECG members to assign him the ticket. It is this task of balancing competing interests that Kejriwal will have to attend to, regardless of the inherent risk in it, evident from Pushkar openly siding with the quartet in the factional fight.
But the compulsion to balance competing interests will become hellishly complicated as AAP expands outside Delhi. This competition, for sure, will become sharp in Punjab, where AAP will test the waters in 2017. In fact, even during the Lok Sabha election, AAP candidates such as HS Phoolka, who zealously sought to win justice for the victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, had complained bitterly against the Yadav faction working against the party and him. Kejriwal had then allowed the factional dispute to fester. His own experience in Delhi will have taught him that competing interests should not evanesce into a sapping and debilitating conflict.
One way of ensuring competing interests don’t degenerate into deep divisions in the party is by keeping open the channel of communication with volunteers, who constitute AAP’s backbone, whether in Delhi, Punjab or elsewhere. Governance is inherently isolating – doors are automatically locked to keep out party activists.
In Delhi at least, Kejriwal has to devise a method of reaching out to volunteers, perhaps the reason why he did not wish encumber himself with a ministerial portfolio. Though he meets four-five MLAs daily, holds the janata darbar, and has instituted the Delhi Dialogue Commission to elicit people’s opinion in over 20 clearly demarcated avenues, it is imperative the party offices remain the throbbing hub of activities. This will provide volunteers a sense of participation. So might not Kejriwal visit the party office frequently, as also AAP ministers and MLAs?
Fighting the spin
The departure of the quartet has led many to construe that the Left and progressive elements have been marginalised in the party. This is palpably a spin, for it was none other than Yadav who consistently harped in media interviews that AAP is neither Left nor Right, but believes in pragmatic politics and thinking of solutions based on empirical evidence.
In fact, some AAP leaders, such as Gopal Rai and Sanjay Singh, are unmistakably left-of-centre, but are not deemed to have the stature of Yadav and Bhushan because they are predominantly Hindi-speaking and do not share the cultural traits of TV anchors. Yet they connect with the crowds in ways Yadav and Bhushan do not and possibly cannot. This is to underscore that there are important leaders in its fold who will ensure AAP’s worldview will keep its gaze leftward as well.
Otherwise too, AAP’s most durable base in Delhi over the last two years has been the poor and lower classes, which were precisely the categories of people among whom the Congress was the strongest. This means AAP will remain a centrist formation with a tilt to the left. This should become manifest in AAP’s governance model, besides providing succour to the wretched of the earth.
Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist from Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before Dawn, published by HarperCollins, is available in bookstores.
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It’s absurd to believe that dissent could involve scheming against the party, or even publically airing views inimical to its interests, as the Bhushans – Shanti and Prashant – seem to have. Nor should internal power struggles, inevitable in any party, justify wrecking its poll prospects. Considering Bhushan Jr discouraged volunteers from campaigning for AAP, and Bhushan Sr openly expressed his preference for Kiran Bedi, the anger against them in the party is understandable.
To make an exception for them would have set a precedent for others to emulate in the future, and rendered the leadership susceptible to the charge of having different yardsticks for judging those who donate lavishly to the party kitty, as Bhushan Sr did by writing a cheque of Rs 1 crore in 2013. In his speech to the party's National Council on March 28, Kejriwal did tacitly outline the limits of dissent.
But for it to have resonance among volunteers he must address the issue in public forums, which he has presumably shunned to remain insulated from the singeing blowback of the internecine conflict. But the beating his image has taken among sections of AAP supporters, portrayed as he has been to them as a dictator-in-the-making. This charge has come to acquire tenability in the context of the overwhelming majority AAP has in the Delhi assembly.
Key feature
However, disagreement has been the defining aspect of AAP’s architecture. The quartet was decidedly not the only dissenters, despite their best efforts to project themselves thus. For instance, Kumar Vishwas differed from others on the party’s ideological lurch towards left-of-centre. From August, he had distanced himself from the party, but never vented his outrage openly and consistently spurned efforts of rebels to join them.
However, in January, he vigorously campaigned for the party and, though the English-speaking analysts tend to dismiss him as a lightweight in comparison to Bhushan and Yadav, he is infinitely a bigger crowd-puller than them. Vishwas’s dissent did not alarm the AAP leadership because it never assumed a sinister dimension. Might not Kejriwal think of disclosing the process through which decisions are taken, particularly those which were voted upon?
Nevertheless, the internecine war in AAP will have bred suspicion in the party. There were activists whom the quartet of rebels brought into the party. Yet not all of them will hook their fortunes to the Bhushan-Yadav bandwagon, either because of their own determination of which side is best for their interests or because they were disappointed at the manner in which the duo widened the chasm in the party.
Silence not an option
It is also true that a few of them could have refrained from being outspoken in their criticism of Bhushan-Yadav out of civility or respect for their personal relationship or to maintain their position of neutrality, hoping not to get caught in the crossfire between the warring factions. However, AAP’s impulse would be to doubt their loyalty to the party. In this era of miniature cameras and taping devices, AAP might even think of them as potential moles who could leak confidential discussions and political blueprints.
It is here Kejriwal must step in to ensure suspicion doesn’t become endemic in the party. He has to only look at some of his trusted lieutenants to draw confidence – some of the 12 members who comprised the Delhi Election Campaign Group, which spearheaded AAP’s bid to win Delhi back, were close to or had good relations with Bhushan and Yadav. Over the months, they pulled away from Bhushan and Yadav, whom they did not think were immersed in working for the party’s victory.
For instance, journalist Ashish Khetan is said to have been fielded from the Lok Sabha constituency in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections at Bhushan’s suggestion. Not only did he play a stellar role in executing the Delhi Dialogue programme, which rallied the Delhi electorate behind the party, he also subsequently emerged as among the more strident critics of Bhushan.
This is why the removal of Atishi Marlena from the panel of party spokespersons has sent confusing signals all around. Articulate and savvy on TV, she seems to have deliberately kept herself under the radar, neither speaking in favour of Yadav and Bhushan, who were credited to have brought her into the party, nor against them. It is impossible to determine whether she would walk out of the party or stay behind. Yet it is to people such as Merlena, understandably befuddled and nervous about their own futures, to whom Kejriwal should reach out.
Attempts to dispel suspicion are vital because power, as we know, always triggers opposition, creates its anti-thesis. In the ambience of suspicion people are loathe to voice their disagreement. It curbs a free flow of ideas, necessary for any political outfit to be creative. Opposition then becomes clandestine. In accommodating divergences, whether of ideas or class or caste or language, AAP would assume a personality which was the principal reason behind the durability of the Congress.
Tangle of competing interests
This is not to say Kejriwal has not been accommodating of competing interests in the party. For instance, members of the DECG were opposed to fielding Pankaj Pushkar from the Timarpur Assembly seat, largely because his chance of victory was deemed remote through internal surveys. Since Yadav was keen on Pushkar’s candidature, Kejriwal prevailed over the DECG members to assign him the ticket. It is this task of balancing competing interests that Kejriwal will have to attend to, regardless of the inherent risk in it, evident from Pushkar openly siding with the quartet in the factional fight.
But the compulsion to balance competing interests will become hellishly complicated as AAP expands outside Delhi. This competition, for sure, will become sharp in Punjab, where AAP will test the waters in 2017. In fact, even during the Lok Sabha election, AAP candidates such as HS Phoolka, who zealously sought to win justice for the victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, had complained bitterly against the Yadav faction working against the party and him. Kejriwal had then allowed the factional dispute to fester. His own experience in Delhi will have taught him that competing interests should not evanesce into a sapping and debilitating conflict.
One way of ensuring competing interests don’t degenerate into deep divisions in the party is by keeping open the channel of communication with volunteers, who constitute AAP’s backbone, whether in Delhi, Punjab or elsewhere. Governance is inherently isolating – doors are automatically locked to keep out party activists.
In Delhi at least, Kejriwal has to devise a method of reaching out to volunteers, perhaps the reason why he did not wish encumber himself with a ministerial portfolio. Though he meets four-five MLAs daily, holds the janata darbar, and has instituted the Delhi Dialogue Commission to elicit people’s opinion in over 20 clearly demarcated avenues, it is imperative the party offices remain the throbbing hub of activities. This will provide volunteers a sense of participation. So might not Kejriwal visit the party office frequently, as also AAP ministers and MLAs?
Fighting the spin
The departure of the quartet has led many to construe that the Left and progressive elements have been marginalised in the party. This is palpably a spin, for it was none other than Yadav who consistently harped in media interviews that AAP is neither Left nor Right, but believes in pragmatic politics and thinking of solutions based on empirical evidence.
In fact, some AAP leaders, such as Gopal Rai and Sanjay Singh, are unmistakably left-of-centre, but are not deemed to have the stature of Yadav and Bhushan because they are predominantly Hindi-speaking and do not share the cultural traits of TV anchors. Yet they connect with the crowds in ways Yadav and Bhushan do not and possibly cannot. This is to underscore that there are important leaders in its fold who will ensure AAP’s worldview will keep its gaze leftward as well.
Otherwise too, AAP’s most durable base in Delhi over the last two years has been the poor and lower classes, which were precisely the categories of people among whom the Congress was the strongest. This means AAP will remain a centrist formation with a tilt to the left. This should become manifest in AAP’s governance model, besides providing succour to the wretched of the earth.
Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist from Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before Dawn, published by HarperCollins, is available in bookstores.
