AAP’s graph dips after dharna: Will BJP stop playing copycat?

By Iconoclast

With the Delhi theatre winding down briefly and the AAP graph in a sharp decline, the question now is what happens to the various parties who were suddenly enamoured of the disingenuous gambits of symbolism that the party had spawned.

The signature tune of AAP was giving up of the Lal Battis, thus symbolically giving up VIP culture and staying in humble dwellings, another symbolism for humility. The veneer that the party sought to put up has been torn apart by the sheer arrogance and hubris involved in the #AAPdharna, as the twitterati called it, which degenerated into #AAPDrama and #AAPShame. This precipitous turn of events creates difficulty even for the parties such as Congress and BJP which had quietly filched the good points which AAP stood for and were at pains to demonstrate that they were more AAP-like than even AAP.

Arvind Kejriwal during his dharna. PTI

Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the BJP Chief Minister of MP, and Raman Singh, the BJP Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh, were always known to be common men's leaders, but even they felt compelled to hastily repackage their efforts at creation of an anti- corruption helpline. Even the doyen of the anti-corruption crusade, the redoubtable Narendra Modi, let it be discreetly known that their anti-corruption helpline had been functioning since 2011. Narendra Modi also got a chance to flaunt his SWAGAT system of public grievance redressal when the much touted Janata Darbar of Arvind Kejriwal came a cropper. Even though Shivraj had been holding a very successful Janata Darbar for years, he had to suddenly dust up his efforts and proclaim himself as the Aam Aadmi's lieutenant. One could see discomfiture writ large on the face of various chief ministers. Even such simple folk as Nitish Kumar and Naveen Patnaik, largely untainted and clean, and enjoying good popular support and even good track records, could be seen writhing with discomfiture at the upstart's proclamation of a copyright over all that the common man stood for. This was becoming apparent in the actions of many politicians.

The most curious case was that of Vasundhara Raje, the resident royalty of Rajasthan. She famously sets more store by style than substance, but was seen trying to show herself off as a vegetarian tigress, however unconvincing the effort. Having lost her previous government in 2008 , after taking over this time, she immediately brought back all the officers back who had run her previous government, including a Chief Secretary who was her Finance Secretary. She  generally reinstalled all the systems which brought her so much infamy. Lalit Modi's wife came and stayed with her after she took over as CM, but the moment the AAP government was installed in Delhi, even Raje started showing the effects of the AAP virus.

Though it fools no one as she had already spent crores of government money on this bungalow as leader of Opposition, she tom-tommed that she would not shift into the designated CM Bungalow, and that she would reduce her security, and that she would stop at traffic lights. However, everyone is watching her as she has left key positions vacant, waiting for the Lok Sabha elections to be over before she can get back to her old style.

Then there was the even more curious case of Priya Dutt and Sanjay Nirupam, who suddenly discovered that their nearly 15-year-old government was overcharging the public for power. So they have started their own version of the AAP Dharna in Mumbai. They did not realize that the original common man's CM, Mamata Banerjee, despite all these gimmicks, is now having to contend with a very poor governance record.

Now that the AAP drama has started giving diminishing returns, it is interesting to see how these copy-cats are going to react. It must be said, however, that while a number of state governments were going head over heels to copy AAP ideas, including its topi, Narendra Modi showed no signs of panic. Down south, Jayalalitha seems to be unconcerned too. It is reported that even RSS got flustered by AAP's surge in Delhi and its pan-India membership drive, but Modi and Jayalalitha seemed to have had a sense of déjà vu, and the denouement that struck AAP through its own intrinsic lack of direction seems to have vindicated them. AAP's actions in espousing and marketing these symbolisms now appear to be what they were, mere totems and symbols. Ultimately, there is no getting away from robust governance.

People have very sharp antennae, and you can keep up the pretence only for so long. As Abraham Lincoln famously said:
"You can fool some of the people all the time, you can fool all the people for some time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time".

(Iconoclast is an insider with a ringside view of matters that matter. He is a keen observer of political and administrative intrigues as also of sports and culture. He tweets @IamIconoclast)