Is Arvind Kejriwal an asset or a liability for AAP?

This morning’s headlines tell us why Kejriwal is a misfit in office. He says he will quit if his Jan Lokpal Bill is not passed. This statement alone reinforces the view that he is not ready for responsibility and is itching to get back to his street-fighter role. That is what he revels in. He can be the battering ram of his party, not its leader.

This is not to deny any of his points: the home ministry has no business deciding what legislation the Delhi government can bring or not bring. And Kejriwal's point that the Delhi police must be under the state government is also valid. But who disagrees with these views? These issues relate to federalism and almost all regional parties would support Kejriwal on this. I suspect even Congress CMs would be happy to do so outside Sonia Gandhi’s earshot.

But a good idea on federalism must be fought legally and with political cunning. It cannot be prosecuted through public tantrums and the abandonment of governance. Kejriwal, unfortunately, has shown a penchant for precisely that.

Heroes become zeroes when they fail to understand the forces that enable them to play their heroic roles. While it is not my case that Kejriwal is heading towards becoming a cipher, he is certainly looking less heroic these days. The halo has faded. And like Don Quixote, he is tilting at every passing windmill.

Power appears to have disoriented him, and responsibility appears to have made him shriller. If at all the Aam Aadmi Party still looks coherent, it is not because of Kejriwal - but his silently competent party ideologue Yogendra Yadav. If the AAP honchos had an ounce of sense they would tell Kejriwal to pack up and make Yadav the face and voice of AAP. No one else has the ability to take the idea of AAP from promise to fulfilment.

Before we get to Kejriwal’s follies, let's first understand how he is not the first one in the anti-corruption movement to be consumed by failing to understand the upsurge which brought them fame.

Remember Anna Hazare, in whose name Kejriwal & Co launched the Jan Lokpal movement? Where is Anna now? His stature shrank when he launched his second fast in Mumbai - not because there were no takers for anti-corruption ideas, but because he was simply out-of-sync with the urban youth mood. People wanted movement from ideas to action, not endless agitation.

The base for the anti-corruption movement was formed by urban middle class youth and many other aspirational groups, but the finger-wagging, forever-willing-to-fast Anna morality play simply did not connect with youth after the initial surge of enthusiasm. This, in due course, led to Kejriwal's decision to go on his own fast that ultimately led to the formation of AAP.

If Anna was not in step with the movement he theoretically headed, till last month it seemed that at least Kejriwal was. Now one cannot be sure. Not only has Kejriwal alienated key constituencies like the upper and middle classes, but he is also coming across as one of those fire-and-brimstone moralists that we thought we had bid goodbye to in the middle ages.

Nothing, nothing irritates today's generation more than the adoption of a shrill moral tone and an attitude of absolute certainty on issues. The same humility that Kejriwal was lauded for in his trust vote speech on 3 January is now gone, replaced by a preachy tone that even gentlemen in white frocks - who routinely threaten hellfire and damnation - would be chary of.

His recent letter to Delhi Lt Governor Najeeb Jung, one of the most respectable figures in Delhi, sucks. It is odiously unctuous, condescending and hectoring at the same time. "You have taken an oath to protect the constitution and not be loyal to a party or the home ministry" he wrote to Jung for seeking the Solicitor General's advice on Kejriwal's Jan Lokpal Bill, which apparently requires the centre's nod before introduction.

"You are a good man", begins Kejriwal condescendingly, before reminding the LG about his constitutional obligations. "Don't let the constitution die," he warns.

I am aghast at this insolence. It is precisely the Kejriwal kind of morally certain individuals who are the biggest threats to the constitution, not the Najeeb Jungs of the world - the same Jung who sent him parathas on the day of his flop dharna, offering him a face-saver negotiated by Yogendra Yadav. Jung obliged by suspending the cop whose head Kejriwal wanted as price for ending his dharna.

Kejriwal's orchestrated meeting with auto drivers - said to be a key AAP constituency in Delhi - last Friday (7 February) is also likely to put the harried auto passengers' backs up. Kejriwal agreed to let them delay putting up GPS devices on their vehicles and they need not accept passengers if they are on their way home. Their vehicles also can't be seized if drivers aren't wearing their uniforms - so, in essence, you can never know if your auto ride came courtesy a genuine driver or a stand-in or even a criminal. In pandering to one constituency, Kejriwal has essentially alienated a larger constituency of auto users - Delhi's citizens. The same class of auto users who saw hope in him.

His law-challenged Law Minister, Somnath Bharti, now suspected of being a serial spammer, who also displayed a degree of misogyny and racism in the way he went after allegedly drug-peddling Africans, is already a liability for AAP.

Kejriwal now stands on the cusp of a change in AAP's ledgerbook: from AAP's biggest asset he is likely to become its complete liability.

It is Yadav who is now keeping the AAP flag flying. Would you rather believe someone who has this to say (“Politics is inherently a coalition activity. We have been approached by labour unions also. But what we don't want is to play the old school labour politics, where the union is only concerned about the rights of the labourer and not the bigger picture; creation of jobs, economics growth”) or someone who is everyday threatening someone or something, seeking excuses to resign and pandering to the narrow interests if the autorickshaw unions?.

It is perhaps the Kejriwal no-show on governance that prompted KN Govindacharya, a former RSS ideologue and AAP sympathiser, observe in an interview to The Economic Times: “I fear that Kejriwal may become the Abhimanyu of Mahabharata, where he learns how to enter the chakravyuh and doesn't know how to exit. In the Mahabharata, the gurus broke the rules to attack him, and Arvind (Kejriwal) too might face such unethical attacks, from thaili shahs (bag men), to naukar shahs (bureaucrats) to rival parties. But the fact is that in terms of a political continuum, the process will be on, many experiments like this are in the pipeline.”

The only error is Govindacharya’s logic is this: Kejriwal does not need a “thaili shah” to upset his applecart. He is happy to do it himself.

My own view is that Yogendra Yadav would be a better caretaker of the idea of AAP than Kejriwal.

The writer is editor-in-chief, digital and publishing, Network18 Group