The Aam Aadmi Party’s landslide victory, winning 92 out of the 117 seats in the Punjab assembly election, is historic. Punjab’s duopoly of Congress and Akali Dal is one of the oldest in the country – both parties are more than a century old. A ten-year-old party has reduced them to the margins of Punjab’s electoral map. This is not just a historic moment for Punjab, it is a landmark moment in India’s democratic history. AAP has become only the fourth political party after the Congress, BJP, and the CP(M) to have control over more than one state in the country. Having opened its account in the state of Goa as well this year, the party is just one state shy of formally being recognised by the Election Commission as a national party.
Many factors are being attributed to this result and AAP’s success — anti-incumbency against the Congress, continued disillusionment with the Akali Dal, the Punjabi voters’ desperation for change, and AAP’s novelty as an untested player. But there is a reluctance to acknowledge the most important factor in this election, in my view – Arvind Kejriwal himself.
Reading AAP’s rise wrong
The Kejriwal model of governance certainly caught the imagination of the people of Punjab. But this landslide is not just about Kejriwal’s credibility as a good administrator. It is equally about his meticulous approach to mass politics. Shekhar Gupta, in his Cut The Clutter programme Friday probed Kejriwal’s origins in the Anna movement, briefly entertaining the idea that Anna Hazare may have been the Chandragupta who found himself a Chanakya in Kejriwal or vice-versa. In mythological terms, Kejriwal prefers to call his vision of governance the true essence of Ram Rajya. But, in Shekhar Gupta’s terms, Kejriwal is the Chanakya to his own idea of building a Ram Rajya.
I was on several news debates over the past two days – both as a participant and a spectator. Chetan Bhagat on Aaj Tak said that AAP should thank the Congress for how it self-destructed. Professor Surinder Jodhka said on ThePrint’s YouTube show moderated by Jyoti Malhotra that Kejriwal had no charisma in Punjab. This is a U-turn of sorts by those who not so long ago used to say that Kejriwal’s face was overpowering in the AAP campaign. Now, a common refrain being used to explain the victory is: ‘Such was the disgust against traditional parties that this new party that was begging for one chance was given that chance.’
Anti-incumbency certainly created the ground for AAP’s rise, but one must remember anti-incumbency is a norm in elections, not an exception. And the existence of this one condition is not enough. The conditions necessary for the emergence of a third player in Punjab have always been around. The fact that Punjab’s parties have existed for a century now means that several attempts have been made to unseat them over the decades. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the Left parties, Simranjit Singh Mann’s Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) and Manpreet Badal’s People’s Party of Punjab (PPP) – all tried and failed. AAP bucked that trend because it had something that none of these parties had.
Also read: Why Akhilesh Yadav could not defeat Yogi despite signs of anti-incumbency
The Kejriwal model
In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, AAP got just 7.38 per cent of votes in Punjab. In 2021, AAP won just a seventh of all seats in the state’s local body election. Why did the anti-incumbency against the traditional parties not translate into success for AAP just a couple years ago? It is because those elections were not referendums on the Kejriwal model of governance.
Kejriwal’s opponents have been so kind to his towering presence in Punjab politics. On the eve of the election, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi, Narendra Modi, Charanjeet Channi, Sukhbir Badal, Navjot Singh Sidhu — all launched a blistering attack on Kejriwal. Shooting from the shoulders of rebel AAP leader Kumar Vishwas – someone who has been publicly sulking after his attempts to cajole Kejriwal into giving him a Rajya Sabha seat failed in early 2018. They had all sensed that Kejriwal had become the leader that Punjab was trusting with its future – and wanted to strike at that trust.
Before AAP had announced its CM face, the campaign was centred around ‘Ik Mauka Kejriwal Nu’ – one chance for Kejriwal. The AAP leader made several ‘guarantees’ in the run up to the polls, some of the most popular promises being free electricity, Rs 1,000 monthly cash transfer to women, high-quality schools and hospitals, and employment guarantees. In a state battered by the declining fortunes of the agrarian industry, pandemic and substance abuse, Kejriwal addressed the survival instincts of voters who wanted out from the endless circle of poverty and despair. His welfare model promised instant relief along with a guarantee of long-term prosperity and wealth creation for all – something he has demonstrated a capability to pull off in Delhi.
C-Voter’s election tracker has been a useful tool to glean the Kejriwal influence on these polls. In C-Voter tracker for September, Kejriwal was Punjab’s first choice for prime minister. 23.4 per cent of voters picked him – a number higher than that for both Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi. Whether one likes it or not, Kejriwal is today a mass leader of Punjab.
His commitment to achieving his political goals manifest in a working style and ethic that might exist in few politicians in India today. Once a politician lays out a vision for change, winning the election is about organising and narrative-building. As a grassroots activist, he had built up a mastery in organising pre-AAP. During the India Against Corruption movement and thereafter, he and his team have developed a sharp messaging mind that is more brain than muscle.
I worked closely with him until late 2020 when I left for my graduate education at Harvard. I saw from up close how Kejriwal built an army of ground organisers and leaders through personal mentorship. Ordinary party volunteers would become organisers deputed to build the party in different states. They would learn the skills on the go and through coaching from the boss. Kejriwal places immense trust in people who are on the ground building the party and works with them on an almost-daily cadence to track and strategise progress.
It was incredible to watch him create party apparatus in different states through sheer grit, persistence, and effort. It would always bother me when ex-AAP leaders would call him authoritarian, because what I saw was far from it. He was agile, adept and always willing to be proven wrong.
Also read: Narendra Modi is going to be around for a long time. Get used to it
Why Bhagwant Mann
Some people might misconstrue the focus of this article on Kejriwal as an underplaying of the role of Bhagwant Mann. Nothing could be further from the truth. Bhagwant Mann’s immense popularity in Punjab is the reason he was chosen as the CM’s face. After his CM candidature was decided, C-Voter’s Yashwant Deshmukh went on record to say that AAP got a clear 4-5 per cent vote share bump. Mann’s consistent performance as a stellar MP in the Lok Sabha and credibility as an honest and sincere leader gave people the confidence in him to solve their problems. To do justice to the incredible leader that Mann is, I would have to write another op-ed.
The trait of powerful Indian politicians today — sometimes also applied to Kejriwal — is that they do not appreciate or promote other mass leaders, lest they emerge as challengers to their leadership. Contrary to this trend, Arvind Kejriwal has given Punjab a chief minister who has a mass appeal in his own right. The jodi of Kejriwal and Mann are comfortable in each other’s popularity and complement each other. That’s why Punjab went all in on Bhagwant Mann to implement the governance model of his bade bhai Arvind Kejriwal.
Akshay Marathe has been an advisor to Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal and is currently studying public policy at Harvard University. Views are personal.
(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)