AAP’s message: mass movements are prediction-resistant

Over the last few days since the AAP came to power in Delhi, both the BJP and the Congress, have gotten back to their routine game of dumping down. What's conspicuously missing is the bewilderment that gripped them when the former recorded a stunning victory.

The biggest learning for the BJP and the Congress in Delhi elections should have been that that the AAP was prediction-resistant. Every single prediction of the debutant by both the national parties went wrong, and in hindsight symbolised arrogance and complete ignorance of public sentiments. When they were proved wrong, they were certainly baffled and worried; BJP more so because they were so certain that Narendra Modi was ready to ride them back to power.

AAP volunteers. AFP

As a result, they appeared modest for a few days with the rabid spokespersons of both the parties trying to eat back their words because the AAP shattered their predictions and arrogance. But, on the day of the AAP's first announcement on water, the parties were back to their original self. The second decision on electricity made it pretty obvious that their guards were down permanently.

Now they consider AAP as yet another political party like theirs which have time-tested standard operating procedures to survive, govern and get ahead in our petty bourgeoisie politics. No wonder, they find both the decisions of AAP—which were part of their manifesto—nothing but populism. They don't seem to understand the language of universal access to essential services such as water and energy.

In politics, this is bound to happen. However, what both the BJP and the Congress seem to have forgotten too quickly is AAP's prediction-resistance because it contained a message from the people who voted and rooted for them. A political message that mass movements are unpredictable, and as Noam Chomsky said, "anarchism is a tendency in human thought which shows up in different forms in different circumstances". Some leaders did call Kejriwal and his band of supporters anarchists as if it was apolitical.

AAP's rapid emergence was a mass movement indeed. Otherwise, it wouldn't have risen to such political significance in less than a year of its birth. History shows that dynamics of such movements are completely unknown because they are not driven by a big organisation, but spontaneously generated from within. The intrinsic momentum is unnoticeable until it tips the surface. Till then, it's individuals and communities acting on their own, some times joining hands and acting together.

This is precisely what happened with the AAP. The party energised a number of individuals and communities, but the bigger thrust came from within the people - out of their anguish, aspirations and most importantly, hope. Its potential was unknown. Political leaders and experts tried to predict its depth, but realised later that they were foolish to measure something that was immeasurable.

Several parts of the world in the recent past have witnessed the same unpredictability in mass movements - the uprising against the commercialisation of Turkey, victorious protests in Canada and Europe against the shutting down of a pipeline and Monsanto respectively, and the well-known occupy movements against the Wall Street and the European Central Bank. Of course, we also have the examples such as the Arab Spring.

This unpredictability is the AAP's USP.

And we have seen only a fraction of that in Delhi. We possibly cannot imagine how it will pan out across India; but our old style political leaders have no qualms in launching into predictions: they say that AAP cannot scale up across the country because Delhi is not India.

What the conventional politicians, including the asset-rich CPM, should realise is that if the AAP sentiment can move people across India, it can indeed build into invisible undercurrents, which in due course can join together to form tidal waves. As the AAP ideologue Yogendra Yadav said in his interview with Indian Express, it is not about substitutes, but about alternatives. So far, our best option was a substitute.

The well-entrenched politicians should realise that their arithmetic of substitutes will come under considerable stress sooner than later. The only way to survive is to change ways by respecting people. And that will be about letting go of the past and looking forward to respecting people.