IndPol
New Aam Aadmi
Party – a breath of fresh air
By Subhash Chopra, New Delhi
A breath of fresh air in India’s noisy politics – thanks to
the new Aam Aadmi Party. The country witnessed quite a bout of surprises, political
as well as social, in the dying weeks of 2013. The crop of political surprises
that gripped the nation included the massive defeat of Congress party at the
hands of not just BJP but more thunderously at the hands of the new commoners
or Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). The personal defeat of the three-times Congress chief
minister Sheila Dikshit by over 25,000
votes to the AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal
was the biggest upset of all. Having
snatched the symbolic top prize of Delhi state in these so-called semi-finals
of 2014 parliamentary poll, the Kejriwal party has formed the government in the
national capital state with himself as the chief minister, precariously
supported from the outside by the Congress.
The big surprise on
the social front was the hurried passage of the Lok Pal (ombudsman) bill that
had been waiting in India’s parliamentary corridors for 46 long years. The party
political rush to claim the credit for its passage was not just hilarious but threw
up open division among Anna Hazare-Kejriwal camp, the most vocal drivers of the bill in the
recent couple of years. Anna Hazare
welcomed the Congress-piloted bill’s passage and even thanked the Congress for
its efforts while Kejriwal claimed that it was a “Joke Pal” bill lacking teeth
and that Anna had not carefully read it.
The BJP’s decisive election
victories in the two big states of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh have put
the party into the forefront of the 2014 parliamentary polls but not as spectacularly
as it would like to believe. For one
thing, the so-called Modi ( Gujarat CM) wave did not make any impact. Madhya
Pradesh’s Shivraj Chouhan, and Rajasthan’s Vasundhra Raje won on their own. Chhatissgarh saw a pretty
close battle with no role for Modi. In
Delhi , where Modi addressed a string of rallies, BJP failed to win even a
wafer-thin majority – rather it fell short of clear four seats in the 70-member
Assembly. Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party trained its guns more heavily on the
Congress, letting the BJP well off the hook.
With the spotlight still on Delhi, the clean sweep by Congress in
Mizoram for the fourth successive term went unsung.
The battle lines for the parliamentary contest may have been drawn with BJP’s Modi stomping
venues outside Gujarat and Rahul Gandhi
increasingly looking like the Congress prime ministerial candidate. The battle, however, is beyond the control of both
Modi and Rahul in the well established era of coalition government at the
Centre. The real arbiters are going to be the regional state leaders whose
choice will tip the balance in favour of either the BJP or Congress-led
coalition as witnessed over the last couple of decades. With coalitions still unformed, the
parliamentary poll scenario remains blurred.
Rahul’s emergence as
the Congress prime ministerial candidate looks more certain after his bold
refusal to back his own party’s cover-up
of Adarsh society scam and earlier
scrapping of ordinance plan to protect convicted politicians. Behind the BJP
curtain, Narendra Modi’s
candidature is not quite settled in spite of the RSS drum beats. Modi’s
candidature for the top job will have to wait till the emergence of a coalition
favouring the party. Modi could well be out of favour of the coalition partners
who may not like to join him because of his 2002 Gujarat pogrom background. In such a scenario BJP
could well be looking for a more acceptable face than Modi. A compromise
candidate like old stalwart L.K. Advani ,
party president Rajnath Singh or Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Chouhan might well derail the Modi bandwagon. Strange
are the compulsions of coalition politics
that simply cannot be wished away.
Meanwhile the debate in India continues to gallop to new
issues like the recent judgement of the Supreme Court reversing a Delhi High
Court verdict decriminalising consensual sex among gays, lesbians and transgenders. Opinion in the country is divided with some
of BJP leaders like party president Rajnath Singh calling gay actitvities “unnatural’’. The Congress on the other hand
has decided to seek a review of the Supreme Court bench’s
decision which , in its view, drags India back to the 19th
century when the British colonial penal code was enacted in India. Britain
herself has long gotten rid of that retrograde law.
The
corruption issue, however, continues to occupy centre stage. The Lok Pal Bill’s
passage has been a great step forward. But it is widely regarded as only a step
in that direction. While sharing the first step in the fight against corruption
was initiated by Congress party when it brought in the Right to Information
legislation. Lok Pal is one more step in that struggle, with more to come as it
gets translated into implementation and action . As per the new measure, the
federal Lok Pal will be appointed by a panel consisting of the Prime Minister,
the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, the Leader of the Opposition, the Chief justice
of India, and an eminent jurist selected by these four members.
Headed by a chairperson,
who can be a serving or retired Chief Justice or judge of the
Supreme Court, it will have the power to probe complaints of corruption against
prime minister, current and former ministers, MPs and bureaucrats. Any
complaint against the prime minister will be probed in camera and only
if two-thirds of the eight-member Lok Pal panel agree.
The complaints will be investigated by the CBI (Central
Bureau of Investigation) independently
or at the instance of Lok Pal. The CBI will, of course, continue to function under the central government, a provision
fiercely opposed by Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party who wants the CBI out of central
government control.
Tailpiece. While high decibel talk of corruption, imagined ,
perceived or whipped up for party political reasons, has given India a bad
name, India continues to be one of world’s most attractive destinations for
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI),
according to a recent report by the financial rating agency Fitch.
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Subhash Chopra is a freelance journalist and
author of ‘Partition, Jihad and Peace’ and other writings.
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