AAP : The Way Forward

Whatever the second hand opinions in the media may say, the AAP experiment is necessarily the way forward in Indian democracy, but the real challenge lies in institutionalizing these small changes so that these donot fade away in the moments of failure and doubt.

There have been many socio-political experiments in the 21st century in India, but the uniqueness of the AAP experiment lies in the fact that it has the capacity to go beyond its own prejudices and to to merge with itself the existing people's movements in India. It has no fixed ideology, it's leadership has a wide range of thinkers, ranging from right-wing to left wing to lohiati socialists. The real challenge would be to keep it that way.

The experiments of AAP, right from the candidates selection process to it's funding are instrumental in giving new horizons to the electoral politics in India, which was mostly the same across the party line. While the lutyen-centric analysts may argue that the victory of AAP in delhi was due to personality of Arvind Kejriwal, it was actually due to ideas of Arvind Kejriwal and not due to man himself.

Indian history shows that political parties that have emerged out of political movements have a tendency to get trapped in the personality cult of it's leaders and to deviate from its core issues and principles. What AAP needs to do is to not just keep doing good experiments but to incorporate these in itself in such a way that these can't be deviated from. However, the problem with institutionalizing these experiments lies in a simple fact that constitutions of political parties in India are not recognized by court of law.

The beginning should be made from the candidate selection process. During the loksabha elections, neither there was sufficient time nor organization for a proper candidate selection process, but for next delhi elections (whenever they happen), there is sufficient time and there will be sufficient organizational support to incorporate a transparent and democratic candidate selection process. Reviews of sitting MLAs should be done and women should be given better representation.

AAP should this time have a proper model of implementation of Swaraj, police & judicial reforms when it comes to power. AAP should have the capacity to handle dissent in its organization as well as government. And most importantly, it should have the guts to accept mistakes, like it has shown till now.