Newly anointed national party AAP may well have peaked with its USPs losing steam rapidly

The AAP’s dominant strategy of pursuing ideological agnosticism vis-à-vis the BJP hasn’t really paid off as expected anywhere, outside of Delhi.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) expanded its footprint in the first decade of its existence by insisting that all other parties were corrupt. The party now exudes willingness to join hands with any party, corruption no bar, that helps stop the BJP juggernaut in the next election. Perhaps it is a case of belated discovery of team spirit or a sharpened ideological lens. Yet, the more likely reason seems to be that the party is facing an existential battle for survival.

The context of the AAP’s present precarious situation is threefold.

One, the corruption crackdown on its Delhi leadership, including the prime target AAP supremo and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal who has been summoned by the CBI for questioning in the alleged “liquor scam”. Whatever the merits of the case, the crackdown has clearly caused damage to the party.

“Delhi Model” Struggles

This is not just because of the thorough hollowing out of its distinctive anti-corruption brand, but more importantly because of the serious threat it represents for AAP’s ability to govern effectively, and to keep providing generous welfare benefits. In recent years, free and universal service delivery or the “Delhi model” has become the core brand of the party. However, Manish Sisodia, the heart of the administrative system, is now cooling his heels in prison. That poses the first challenge for the AAP: the credibility or sustainability of its delivery model.

Two, the Delhi model has not yet proved replicable to a second state, given the experience of Punjab so far. The Punjab-based political scientist Ashutosh Kumar has characterised the AAP’s Punjab governance as a theatrical exhibition of policies, which have been undermined by fairly patchy execution.

It is hardly surprising that AAP has struggled in a larger and more complex state, facing structural problems of religion-inflected political instability, increasing gang violence and a severe debt crisis. Such a treacherous cocktail might have proved intractable even to a strong, experienced hand. Under the leadership of Bhagwant Mann, a populist "comedian" outsider with little experience of governance, and whose authority has been routinely undermined by diktats of the Delhi High Command, the state appears to be adrift.

Some might argue that the party necessarily requires a Kejriwal-like cult figure, to anchor its state-level development model, both in terms of execution and marketing. That poses the second challenge for the AAP: The replicability of its delivery model.

No Ideologically Committed Base

Three, the party still remains an ideologically ill-defined formation. An ideological base of support (which often translates to a conventional social base) might have provided a buffer to the party at this crucial time. As many scholars have shown in Europe, parties with clear ideological profiles can survive periods of decline in valence (or competency) scores, not parties with a promiscuous centrist ideology.

As had happened in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in Delhi, pro-BJP voters might shift again to the saffron camp, and anti-BJP voters to the Congress, leaving the AAP beyond serious contention in both Delhi and Punjab. This is the third challenge for the AAP: the ability of its fleet-footed ideological model to survive the classic centrist trap.

With the party’s revolutionary fervour quietened for the moment, Arvind Kejriwal seeks to now position himself within the old Indian model of a heavy bargaining regional satrap, in the mould of a Sharad Pawar, Nitish Kumar or Mamata Banerjee. These leaders present themselves not as embodiments of an alternative political vision, but as strongmen key to the formation of any national coalition government. Implicit in this positioning is the ability to drive a hard political bargain, on ticket distribution pre-elections and division of power and resources post-election, on behalf of their states.

Congress Claws Back

However, to become a national power-broker demands broad acceptability among opposition elites and a demonstrated control over your strongholds. Unfortunately, the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP cannot be said to possess either. Having spent the last four years audaciously promising to replace the Congress as the second pole of national politics, including directly torpedoing the latter’s electoral prospects in Gujarat, the Congress is in no mood for hand-holding its committed enemy on the national stage.

To gauge where the balance of power between the two parties lies, consider Kejriwal’s fire-and-brimstone attack on Modi over Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification, compared to the Gandhi scion’s radio silence on Kejriwal’s legal travails. Delhi Congress, meanwhile, publicly demanded Kejriwal be shown no mercy. Delhi has been a largely bipolar state since its inception, and both parties realise they are probably engaged in a protracted fight to the finish for the same anti-BJP base, especially among Dalits and Muslims.

The AAP’s dominant strategy of pursuing ideological agnosticism vis-à-vis the BJP hasn’t really paid off as expected anywhere, outside of Delhi. Its gains in Gujarat have since been nearly wiped out by a hegemonic BJP. And the Punjab triumph was in reality based on skilfully capitalising on local anti-establishment sentiment rather than on its peculiar national positioning.

Meanwhile, the ideologically sharper Congress, following the Bharat Jodo Yatra and a long-drawn campaign against crony capitalism centred on Adani, and helmed by a rejuvenated if not yet resurgent Rahul Gandhi, occupies the central pole in opposition politics. At least till the next general elections.

In the children’s fable which contrasts a patient squirrel slowly hoarding a batch of nuts for the harsh winter to a flamboyant squirrel who lives for the moment (while mocking the former for being a crushing bore), the austere squirrel forgives and forgets at the end, and heartily makes space for the spendthrift one. But then politics is not a game for squirrels.

Asim Ali is a political researcher. Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.