Single Point Party called AAP

I respect most of the AAP leaders including Arvind Kejriwal, Prashant Bhushan and Kumar Vishwas for what they have done and achieved including bringing corruption to the centre of public attention. Their achievements are not just limited to Anna Movement, Arvind Kejriwal did his bit for RTI, Prashant Bhushan fought like a warrior for 2G case and most of their other members have achieved much more than average Indian in their fields of work. Such warriors coming into politics should always be welcome as they are expected to be better than the current lot (at least in terms of honesty). But participating in politics and starting a political party are 2 different things. Generally, political parties are formed on strong ideological grounds. History and current lot of successful parties verify this. All over the world, they have some basic genetic ideology where they fall back upon (One may argue that their is no ideology in the times of opportunism but believe me one may digress from ideology in short term, time is a great leveler and it averages out digression) to answer critical questions they face during their lifetime. (Off course I am not counting Lalu’s and Mulayam’s while discussing this as for them power is the only objective) Democrats in US sights Social liberalism as central to them and Republicans put conservatism and hard core capitalism as central to them. I am quoting example of US as it is most powerful and successful democracy in modern world. In india too major political parties come with a central ideology, for Congress it is secularism, socialism and populism. BJP puts nationalism or Hindu nationalism (as some people call it) forward. Left parties are still stucked to idea of communism. In fact all the parties which are older than 30-40 years have some central ideology (Dravidian parties have Tamil nationalist, Shiv Sena have marathi superiority). India as vibrant democracy have seen experiments with politics without ideology in case of Janta Party of 1975 (Janta Party is very similar to current AAP of in having done “kahi ki ret kahin ka roda, bhanumati ne kunba joda” for single point target). During fragmentation of political issues in 1991 (Mandal, Kamandal) many political parties (SP, RJD) without ideologies were formed. These parties continue to exist today but reason for existence is a person or family. We have to give credit to Lalu’s and Mulayam’s that they are still able to get votes based on pure personal Charisma. These parties will face their challenges when patriarchs depart for better world. Shiv Sena is facing it as BalaSaheb Thackeray lost Charisma in his last few years.

Coming back to AAP, which is also a conglomeration of several people who agree on a single point agenda ‘Lokpal’. Apart from it they have nothing in common between their leaders. Leaders are clueless about issues of national importance (They hide themselves under the veil of focus on Delhi elections now) apart from cleaning up corruption or loosely say politics. While single point agenda organization are good for achieving the goal non-electorally it is very difficult to attain it electorally. If at all a single point organization achieves its goal in short run, they face questions of existence in long run( Janta Party 1977). So it is time for AAP leaders to define AAP. Saying things like “changing the system” may help them in getting volunteers and votes in the short term but it will jeopardize the applicability of organisation in the long run.