There is a certain stereotype of young student radicals joining campus politics in the past that has been associated with Left parties in particular. What is most interesting about the AAP team is that they have no ideological pretensions and many of them are technocrats who have come from the private sector. They are doers, not slogan-raising hotheads…
In the course of interviewing AAP members, I concluded that one of the secrets of their huge success was the power of the young volunteers who signed up for their cause. One of them is Raghav Chadha, who is now a familiar face on television as a very visible spokesperson for the AAP. He is now informally attached to Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia’s office as a financial advisor and will play an important role in the AAP government and party structure.
Raghav Chadha, the most visible 26-year-old in politics today, was one of the youngest to get a licence to practice as a chartered accountant at the age of 22.
He studied at Delhi’s Modern School, became a CA, went to LSE and then set up what he describes as a small wealth management boutique. At a young age Chadha had a good income that placed him in “the 30 per cent tax bracket”.
Then during the Anna movement, Chadha met Kejriwal along with Rahul Mehra, a lawyer who is now also associated with the AAP. Kejriwal asked him to help out in drafting the Delhi Lokpal Bill.
“I was one of the people who worked on that, although it underwent so many changes,” he says. When the AAP was formed, Chadha along with Atishi Marlena, another young and articulate spokesperson, worked on creating 30-odd policy think-tanks. They worked under Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav and Anant Kumar. By January 2013, when the AAP was in power for 49 days, they had done this for six months.
The threads would later be picked up by others. Journalist Ashish Khetan joined the AAP before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, and for the 2015 elections worked on the Delhi Dialogues along with Adarsh Shastri and Meera Sanyal. Shastri is the grandson of veteran Congressman and former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. He gave up his job as an executive in Apple to join the AAP. Meera Sanyal is the former CEO and chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland, who also quit her job to join the AAP (she contested from Mumbai South as an AAP candidate in 2014).
What is clear in the AAP is that despite counting as its members people who have made a name for themselves in their professional fields, the young members of the party are taken very seriously.
Chadha told me, “During the election campaign we were all part of everything. If anyone asks me about the division of labour, I say from 9 a.m. to 12 a.m. we are the communication strategy team; from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. the policy manifesto team; from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. we also give ideas on candidate selection; at night we are on TV. Everyone who can is doing everything.”
Now a pro at news debates (where Chadha is rated as the most aggressive AAP speaker by those who do guest relations for channels), the first time he faced a camera was not that long ago. It was on 8 December 2013, after the AAP came out of the blue to register a presence in Delhi. “It was on NDTV and I was facing Prannoy Roy...here I was, this kid from a completely non-political family,” says Chadha with a grin.
Since then the AAP has had an up-and-down relationship with TV channels. “There was a time when we decided not to go to some TV channels such as Zee News, India TV and Times Now. We felt we should not as we were not given an opportunity to speak.” But the result was that the channels hunted down other individuals who had joined the party and were not designated spokespersons, but were happy to get their 15 minutes of fame. Among them, says Chadha, were a senior JNU professor and a Bhopal activist.
Chadha also spoke sarcastically about the departure of Captain Gopinath, the pioneer of low-cost airlines, from the party.
“The joke in the party is that Captain Gopinath joined AAP in the studio of Headlines Today and left in the studio of NDTV.” Eventually the party would write letters to TV channels informing them of their spokespersons. “The 1.1 crore members of the AAP are not official spokespersons. There was also this guy Sandeep Pandey, who was always appearing on behalf of the AAP on Hindi channels. Before the elections, he joined the BJP.”
Currently, the AAP has given up the idea of boycotting channels who they feel do not give them a fair hearing. For instance, Chadha is now a regular on Times Now. The worst media relationship is possibly with CNN-IBN, owned by Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries since June 2014. It is no secret that the channel blacked out the AAP during the run-up to the 2015 polls. But how does a channel not cover the main party in the fray?
On 12 January Chadha was finally invited to the CNN-IBN studio for the 9 p.m. prime-time news slot. At 8.55 p.m., he was told by the guest coordinator that “the boss said you can’t have AAP.” Earlier, they had tried to record him on what is known as sim-sat in television parlance, which means they could pre-record and edit his remarks on a show that would otherwise be broadcast live. He had refused. And now he was being asked to leave the studio.
Chadha tweeted about it and in the tiny world of Delhi media there was a small furore. Still, since then, CNN-IBN reporters have taken sound bytes and interviews of AAP spokespersons. After the win they had no choice but to carry news of the party for a few days at least.
What’s next for Raghav Chadha?
“In such a short time so many amazing things have happened. We did the Delhi campaign on a budget. Consider how much the BJP spent. They had full-page front-page ads in each paper for days before voting, in Hindi and in English. They must have spent 40 crore on just that, besides the other costs of hoardings, FM spots, etc.”
Chadha too spoke of economising by booking radio ads only during peak hours and putting up hoardings only where population density was high. He spoke of Kejriwal’s eye for detail: “Arvind oversaw the entire campaign. No agency or professionals were involved. He gave the direction: it must be positive...talk of issues, women’s problems in ads. All the recordings were done on laptops and even mobile phones.”
There were moments when the AAP’s members were worried.
For instance, on 15 January, Kejriwal called a press conference in which he accused the BJP state unit president Satish Upadhyay of having links to power distribution companies in the capital and helping them. He said that Upadhyay was part of a company that supplied electricity metres to BSES, one of the leading discoms. There had been some debate within the AAP whether to level these charges or not.
Till that point, the BJP had announced no chief ministerial candidate. The very next day, the party inducted Kiran Bedi and said she would contest the Assembly polls. On 21 January she was declared the chief ministerial candidate.
Chadha said, “For two to three days it looked like they [the BJP] had a winner. I remember being very sulky and upset and saying to Arvind we should maybe not have come out with the scam and forced the BJP to bring in Bedi. He was cool and very composed and told me to just relax and keep at it.” Eventually, Bedi bungled, BJP old-timers sulked and the campaign began to slip out of the BJP’s hands.
Chadha has now become a full-timer in politics. He says that because the party has been preparing blueprints for solutions to various complicated problems, they will do unusual things in governance as well. “We have been searching for alternative models for some time and already have papers, plans and documents.” As he said, “So many extraordinary things have happened in a short time. More amazing things will happen. You will see.”
Excerpted with permission from Capital Conquest: How the AAP’s Incredible Victory has Redefined Indian Elections, Saba Naqvi, Hachette India.
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In the course of interviewing AAP members, I concluded that one of the secrets of their huge success was the power of the young volunteers who signed up for their cause. One of them is Raghav Chadha, who is now a familiar face on television as a very visible spokesperson for the AAP. He is now informally attached to Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia’s office as a financial advisor and will play an important role in the AAP government and party structure.
Raghav Chadha, the most visible 26-year-old in politics today, was one of the youngest to get a licence to practice as a chartered accountant at the age of 22.
He studied at Delhi’s Modern School, became a CA, went to LSE and then set up what he describes as a small wealth management boutique. At a young age Chadha had a good income that placed him in “the 30 per cent tax bracket”.
Then during the Anna movement, Chadha met Kejriwal along with Rahul Mehra, a lawyer who is now also associated with the AAP. Kejriwal asked him to help out in drafting the Delhi Lokpal Bill.
“I was one of the people who worked on that, although it underwent so many changes,” he says. When the AAP was formed, Chadha along with Atishi Marlena, another young and articulate spokesperson, worked on creating 30-odd policy think-tanks. They worked under Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav and Anant Kumar. By January 2013, when the AAP was in power for 49 days, they had done this for six months.
The threads would later be picked up by others. Journalist Ashish Khetan joined the AAP before the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, and for the 2015 elections worked on the Delhi Dialogues along with Adarsh Shastri and Meera Sanyal. Shastri is the grandson of veteran Congressman and former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. He gave up his job as an executive in Apple to join the AAP. Meera Sanyal is the former CEO and chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland, who also quit her job to join the AAP (she contested from Mumbai South as an AAP candidate in 2014).
What is clear in the AAP is that despite counting as its members people who have made a name for themselves in their professional fields, the young members of the party are taken very seriously.
Chadha told me, “During the election campaign we were all part of everything. If anyone asks me about the division of labour, I say from 9 a.m. to 12 a.m. we are the communication strategy team; from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. the policy manifesto team; from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. we also give ideas on candidate selection; at night we are on TV. Everyone who can is doing everything.”
Now a pro at news debates (where Chadha is rated as the most aggressive AAP speaker by those who do guest relations for channels), the first time he faced a camera was not that long ago. It was on 8 December 2013, after the AAP came out of the blue to register a presence in Delhi. “It was on NDTV and I was facing Prannoy Roy...here I was, this kid from a completely non-political family,” says Chadha with a grin.
Since then the AAP has had an up-and-down relationship with TV channels. “There was a time when we decided not to go to some TV channels such as Zee News, India TV and Times Now. We felt we should not as we were not given an opportunity to speak.” But the result was that the channels hunted down other individuals who had joined the party and were not designated spokespersons, but were happy to get their 15 minutes of fame. Among them, says Chadha, were a senior JNU professor and a Bhopal activist.
Chadha also spoke sarcastically about the departure of Captain Gopinath, the pioneer of low-cost airlines, from the party.
“The joke in the party is that Captain Gopinath joined AAP in the studio of Headlines Today and left in the studio of NDTV.” Eventually the party would write letters to TV channels informing them of their spokespersons. “The 1.1 crore members of the AAP are not official spokespersons. There was also this guy Sandeep Pandey, who was always appearing on behalf of the AAP on Hindi channels. Before the elections, he joined the BJP.”
Currently, the AAP has given up the idea of boycotting channels who they feel do not give them a fair hearing. For instance, Chadha is now a regular on Times Now. The worst media relationship is possibly with CNN-IBN, owned by Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries since June 2014. It is no secret that the channel blacked out the AAP during the run-up to the 2015 polls. But how does a channel not cover the main party in the fray?
On 12 January Chadha was finally invited to the CNN-IBN studio for the 9 p.m. prime-time news slot. At 8.55 p.m., he was told by the guest coordinator that “the boss said you can’t have AAP.” Earlier, they had tried to record him on what is known as sim-sat in television parlance, which means they could pre-record and edit his remarks on a show that would otherwise be broadcast live. He had refused. And now he was being asked to leave the studio.
Chadha tweeted about it and in the tiny world of Delhi media there was a small furore. Still, since then, CNN-IBN reporters have taken sound bytes and interviews of AAP spokespersons. After the win they had no choice but to carry news of the party for a few days at least.
What’s next for Raghav Chadha?
“In such a short time so many amazing things have happened. We did the Delhi campaign on a budget. Consider how much the BJP spent. They had full-page front-page ads in each paper for days before voting, in Hindi and in English. They must have spent 40 crore on just that, besides the other costs of hoardings, FM spots, etc.”
Chadha too spoke of economising by booking radio ads only during peak hours and putting up hoardings only where population density was high. He spoke of Kejriwal’s eye for detail: “Arvind oversaw the entire campaign. No agency or professionals were involved. He gave the direction: it must be positive...talk of issues, women’s problems in ads. All the recordings were done on laptops and even mobile phones.”
There were moments when the AAP’s members were worried.
For instance, on 15 January, Kejriwal called a press conference in which he accused the BJP state unit president Satish Upadhyay of having links to power distribution companies in the capital and helping them. He said that Upadhyay was part of a company that supplied electricity metres to BSES, one of the leading discoms. There had been some debate within the AAP whether to level these charges or not.
Till that point, the BJP had announced no chief ministerial candidate. The very next day, the party inducted Kiran Bedi and said she would contest the Assembly polls. On 21 January she was declared the chief ministerial candidate.
Chadha said, “For two to three days it looked like they [the BJP] had a winner. I remember being very sulky and upset and saying to Arvind we should maybe not have come out with the scam and forced the BJP to bring in Bedi. He was cool and very composed and told me to just relax and keep at it.” Eventually, Bedi bungled, BJP old-timers sulked and the campaign began to slip out of the BJP’s hands.
Chadha has now become a full-timer in politics. He says that because the party has been preparing blueprints for solutions to various complicated problems, they will do unusual things in governance as well. “We have been searching for alternative models for some time and already have papers, plans and documents.” As he said, “So many extraordinary things have happened in a short time. More amazing things will happen. You will see.”
Excerpted with permission from Capital Conquest: How the AAP’s Incredible Victory has Redefined Indian Elections, Saba Naqvi, Hachette India.