The narrative seems to be changing – at least a bit. After blaming electronic voting machines for all that ailed his party, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has promised “introspection” and going back to the drawing board, following the drubbing his party has received in Delhi’s civic polls.

But it took two full days. And the public statement came in the wake of widespread public criticism, with even some of his colleagues expressing dissent, amid hints of the possibility of a leadership change in the party being discussed.

What was perceived as criticism and threat from the likes of Kumar Vishvas seems to have been papered over atleast for now, but the question that faces the Aam Aadmi Party is this: Even if Kejriwal wants to go from house to house seeking people’s forgiveness for the mistakes made, will he be given the time to do so? Will he get another chance to refashion the party anew?

For the AAP government in Delhi has suddenly become vulnerable. If the Election Commission disqualifies the party’s 21 MLAs in the “office of profit case” before it, in which a verdict is expected mid May, and restive party MLAs start to eye greener pastures, it could spell trouble for the continuation of the AAP government.

Given the mood in its favour at the moment, it would suit the Bharatiya Janata Party to lure the AAP MLAs to its side and try and force a mid term election in Delhi.

Unless Kejriwal can once again motivate his cadre and prevent his flock from straying, the four year old AAP could well be facing an existential crisis.

That the Aam Aadmi Party should be trounced in all the three Municipal Corporation of Delhi polls, after 10 years of shoddy performance by the BJP, calls for a hard look at why Arvind Kejriwal lost the plot so quickly.

It is being said that Kejriwal had to contend with an unabated wave in favour of Narendra Modi, which was responsible for the BJP’s win. While that may be true, the Modi factor was there also in 2015, when Delhi had given Kejriwal an unprecedented mandate – 67 out of 70 MLAs in the Assembly. And this had happened only eight months after Modi had swept the country and the BJP had won all of the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi.

Somewhere Delhiites had seen a new icon in Kejriwal, as they had done in Modi at the national level, and wanted the AAP leader to get a free hand to rule the capital, and not a fettered mandate that had come in 2013, when he had to form a 49-day government with the help of the Congress.

In 2015, Kejriwal, the darling of the middle classes and the poor in bastis, had got the better of Modi. In 2017, Modi took away both constituencies from Kejriwal.

Four mistakes

With hindsight, wisdom is always easier to trot out. Having said that, there were four major mistakes made by the AAP and its chief, which led to their losing the plot in just two years.

One, Arvind Kejriwal lost his focus as chief minister. He kept targeting Modi, instead of concentrating on delivery in Delhi. What had been his strength as a crusader before coming to power – taking on the most powerful, be it Congress leaders, Modi, corporate honchos – came to border on foolhardiness as chief minister. He attacked Modi, by then elected prime minister, not once or twice but incessantly. People had expected him to work with the Centre to be able to run the Delhi government, which he had been mandated to do. He also made the mistake of fighting on too many fronts at the same time.

Two, he spread his wings too quickly. There is nothing wrong in a political party having national ambitions. But Kejriwal failed to assess what he was up against. In Punjab, for example, the BJP favoured the Congress rather than risk having an “upstart” Kejriwal win and then go on to upset its apple cart in Gujarat.

It is not as if the AAP did not keep its promises on bijlee and paani (electricity and water) or did not improve government schools or start Mohalla clinics. But as events have panned out, it might have been better to have concentrated on Delhi and make it a showpiece which would speak to other states about what was possible under an AAP government.

Image credit: Hindustan Times

Three, Kejriwal was undoubtedly hampered by the lack of powers given to the Delhi government, and these were spelt out in no uncertain terms by the Court. With a formidable foe like the BJP in power, there was daily conflict with the Lieutenant Governor and the Centre, and people got tired of this. Instead of figuring out what he could achieve with the powers at his command, he chose to vent his grievances, real or perceived, on social-media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. His intemperate language against the prime minister did not go down well with people and were seen to be excuses. After all, as many pointed out, even during Sheila Dikshit’s term when she had to contend with a BJP-led National Democratic Alliance of Atal Behari Vajpayee, there had been no such clash.

The fourth factor is Arvind Kejriwal’s “autocratic” style, of which he has been accused by his critics and colleagues. You can argue that most leaders today are autocratic, be it Modi, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Rahul Gandhi, Lalu Yadav, Mayawati, or the late Jayalalithaa, to name just a few.

But the regional parties have been one-man or one-woman shows from the beginning. Modi is able to have his way, because he is the supreme leader legitimised by repeated electoral victories. But also because of the discipline that the BJP and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh leaders are used to in their decision-making processes.

AAP was structured differently – it owed its existence to a mass upsurge. Since it came out of the womb of a movement against corruption, with many joining it out of idealism, having left their jobs or professions, they expected a different style of decision making, of which they would be a part. Kejriwal as the leader failed to “take everyone along”.

A defining moment for AAP, when its downslide really began, was the open and vicious split that took place three weeks after the party’s stupendous victory in Feb 2015. Today people do not remember who fired the first salvo, or the “principle” on which the AAP leaders differed, only that they parted company 20 days after more than half the Delhiites had reposed their faith in them, numbing their supporters. The exit of people like Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav did not just mean the exit of their supporters – it also halted the onrush in the party of idealistic professionals who may have felt that they could play a part in “cleansing” Indian politics. That was the day AAP became like any other party. After that, charges levelled by opponents against its MLAs not only flew, but began to stick.

So here was a fledgling party, which managed to reduce the 130-year-old Congress to a cipher and halted the Modi juggernaut in Delhi. And it changed the popular perception that activists could not be accepted as politicians. Like Modi, Kejriwal’s appeal also cut across caste, class, community. With the decimation of the Congress, many started to view AAP as a force which could, given time, come to replace the Congress. But that is not the way things have shaped up. It seemed as if Kejriwal was in too much of a hurry to really bother with “alternative politics”.

When a storm comes, big trees often fall, wrote renowned Hindi poet Suryakant Tripathi ‘Nirala’ in his poem ”Badal rag”. “But it is the little grass that is able to bend and then straighten up, which comes through unscathed.”