Debate: AAP May be Only Numerically Feasible Alternative to BJP but It's no Great Liberal Hope

At the outset let me say that as Delhi votes, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has much to commend itself.

I say so primarily because of the rhetorical emphasis the party has placed on building a welfare state, as well as its impressive achievements in pursuit of that goal, despite those achievements falling well short of the tall promises and claims made. 

AAP’s success has much to do with a breakthrough of potentially global significance whose origins lie in the movement that birthed the party. For too long, Left and Right fought over the extent the rich must be taxed to fund high-quality public services.

AAP sidestepped that question by arguing that there was a beast called corruption which had assumed almost mythical proportions in India. The pie saved by slaying the hungry beast would be more than enough to wipe every tear from the eye of the poorest. But even in the case of the power sector where the party claimed to have detected an immediately actionable scam, tariff relief came not from breaking the Discom-regulator nexus but from government subsidies. 

Such efforts to sidestep class conflict may have limited potential beyond Delhi, a rich (non)-state especially favoured by successive Central governments. But any case for the worthy cause of public spending is nevertheless worthy of celebration. Kejriwal’s finest moment was when he gave up the subterfuge and defended the subsidy with “Agar 40 crore mein Dilli ki junta khush hai to isse jyaada ek CM ko aur kya chahiye?”

There are few simpler defences for subsidies with the same potential to catch the public imagination.  

Also read: For the Sake of India, I Believe Arvind Kejriwal Must Be Re-Elected in Delhi

Writing recently in The Wire, Avay Shukla argued that Delhi needs to vote for AAP to halt the Modi-Shah juggernaut. As the numbers stack up, it is true that a vote for AAP is the best way to ensure a BJP defeat. The cause itself may also be worthy, especially after the Citizenship Amendment Act, National Register of Citizens and National Population Register.

But it bears mentioning that AAP’s approach to civil liberties and constitutional values is problematic in ways which go beyond the alleged inner party autocracy that forced out the few members of the party with a well-developed constitutional sensitivity. 

As law minister during AAP’s 49-day government, Somnath Bharti, gave in to moral panic in Delhi’s Khirkee Extension by leading a vigilante mob raid on  the houses of African women and subjecting them to drug tests. Whatever the actual chain of events, that the party continues to retain Bharti as an MLA despite his “Yeh hum aur aap jaise nahi hain” defence (‘They are not like us’) highlights just how blind and insensitive the party is to even the most blunt and blatant racism. 

Other examples may be cited.

Kejriwal had an almost Orwellian response on being questioned by Ravish Kumar about privacy issues to do with his mega-CCTV plan during the 2015 campaign. He argued that those who had done nothing wrong had nothing to fear, reminiscent of the arguments of CAA proponents.

The party recently released CCTV footage of Amit Shah campaigning door-to-door in response to a taunt about the absence of CCTV cameras during the recent brutal attacks on Delhi’s finest universities. That it would do such a thing to score a political point highlights just how little AAP values privacy. 

AAP has set much in store by how its reforms in the education sector are inspired by the Finnish model. But the biggest lesson from the world’s best school system is the importance of trusting teachers. AAP’s proposed installation of CCTV cameras in classrooms not only negates that trust but also infringes on free expression and academic freedom.

CCTVs in classrooms (controversial the world over) also fit into a pattern of coercive control of labour through measures such as contractual employment for teachers, advocated elsewhere by Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee. The duo are not only cited as yet another inspiration for AAP’s education reforms but also associated with the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) with which the Delhi government has signed an MoU. 

The welcome emphasis on safeguarding vulnerable children in recent times may be justification enough for CCTV cameras in classrooms. But a reasonable provision for privacy in such a case would require footage to only be released in the case of a specific complaint (say, to the head of the Parent Teachers Association at the very least) rather than be available real time to all, as proposed by the AAP government.

Also read: ‘Development vs Division’: Campaign for Delhi Polls Comes to an End

Given these instances, it is unlikely that AAP will turn out to fulfil liberal hopes. Even on the specific question of the CAA, it is notable that the Delhi assembly, unlike Kerala’s and Punjab’s, has not passed a resolution against the Act, despite the party having won 67 out of 70 seats in the last election.

While AAP’s attitude towards the question of secularism has largely been within the spectrum of acceptability in India, some unease remains, which is again deeply rooted in the imagery and rhetoric of the middle-class, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-supported movement that spawned its birth. 

Just as Modi seemed like the only numerically viable alternative to the corruption of the UPA, AAP seems like the only alternative to the rule of Modi, at least in Delhi.

But liberals in the electorate would do well to keep in mind that the party has only moved so far from the movement once led by Kiran Bedi and Anna Hazare. 

William Stampe is a writer based in Delhi.