Arvind Kejriwal, the person who resigned from the first government within 49 days, is about to complete five years in the second term. After the 2013 assembly election, AAP emerged as the second-largest party after BJP and decided to make a government with outside support of Congress party, as no party has a majority of its own. But, he resigned after 49 days and blamed Congress party for not allowing his government to function independently.
After almost 1 year, when the Delhi assembly elections were held in 2015, AAP registered a massive victory, winning 67 out of 70 seats. The party promised the people with free power, water, education and so on. Registering such a massive victory despite nationwide Modi wave was a big achievement.
The people of Delhi, who voted for PM Modi in 2014 general election, went with AAP in the 2015 assembly election. His promise of freebies worked like magic among the urban population of Delhi, as the party garnered more than 50 per cent of votes and 67 seats.
This shows that no party understands urban populism like Kejriwal. He has not put the party in any ideological box, and instead, tried to work on feedback based pragmatic manner.
In 2015, when the Modi wave was on its peak, AAP realized that attacking PM Modi is damaging their credibility, and started an afresh campaign with ‘Modi for the nation, Kejriwal for Delhi’ rhetoric, and this worked! After winning the election, the party once again started attacks on PM Modi in various assembly elections, and this resulted in a successive loss.
When the party lost even the municipal elections in Delhi in April 2017, it again changed the strategy to not attacking PM Modi. On almost all contentious issues, the party stood away from taking a stand. On the whole JNU matter, the party criticized the violence, but Kejriwal had not made a single statement in support of JNU students.
The party had not allowed the left-liberal ecosystem of Lutyen’s Delhi to takeover its ideological narrative. On the matters of ‘National Interest’, it supported the BJP government at the centre because the party knows very well that the voter in Delhi is very nationalist. Kejriwal threw out the people like Prashant Bhushan or Yogendra Yadav who could take the party in the leftward direction and were a challenge to him; he also threw out Kumar Vishwas who would have taken the party in rightward direction and was also a challenge to him.
If one attempts to define the ideology of AAP, it would be called ‘radical populism’. He distributes freebies even at cost of quality, as seen in free water: the quality of water deteriorated but Kejriwal focused on free water instead of quality water. It is very convenient for Kejriwal to claim that his government is giving free water to every family while the quality of water is deteriorating. ‘Free water’ suits the populist politics of Kejriwal, but, the people of the state are forced to drink poor quality water. The people of the city are already suffering from a toxic environment due to smoke, they are also forced to drink toxic water.
The freebie politics of Kejriwal has destroyed the public transportation of the city too. Under the regime of Kejriwal, the total number of buses under Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) has gone down as, the transportation body is suffering massive financial loss, and the Delhi government is not ready to support it. Kejriwal has remained loyal to ‘radical populism’, even if the people had to pay the cost of in the long term.
Kejriwal understands the radical populism is the easiest way to win an election in an urban conglomerate like Delhi. And so far, he has worked in the same direction. Free water, free power, free education, free health and free metro rides- all these are the leaflets of Kejriwal’s urban populism. His politics has worked very well so far, at least in Delhi, and it might win him another term in Delhi.