Never has a politician lost political capital so quickly just after winning an absolute majority for a second consecutive election. But such is Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s political life. He seems to rise and fall over and over again.
It is not possible for Kejriwal to be on a roller coaster forever. It has to stop. And when it does, the joy ride will be over.
The time is right for him to stop hustling and settle down for a good deal. And there can’t be a better deal than joining the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
That would make him a Nitish Kumar. Isn’t that a comfortable thing? Nitish Kumar’s third term in Bihar has been lacklustre, and the anti-incumbency sentiment is more pronounced than ever. And yet, aur hai kaun? Who else is there? This TINA (or ‘there is no alternative’) factor for Nitish Kumar wouldn’t hold if he was not with the BJP today. The Amit Shah-led party would have hauled him over the coals for the misery of Bihar’s migrant labourers across the country. The benefit of being with the BJP is that the only potential challenger is on your side.
Nitish Kumar is the tallest political leader in Bihar, Narendra Modi is the tallest political leader nationally. Beyond the faces, the caste calculation is also such that the chances of the NDA losing Bihar this winter looks impossible. Nitish Kumar is all set to return for a fourth time, unless the Covid-19 crisis takes too heavy a toll. As of now, Bihar has seen only two deaths, with the number of positive coronavirus cases being less than 100.
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Arvind as Nitish
Arvind Kejriwal won a second term in February 2020, losing only five of his 67 seats in a 70-member assembly. Since the day he won, the BJP has made life difficult for him, in a way very different from the first term.
In his first term, Kejriwal saw the BJP use constitutional mechanisms to not let him perform. They wanted to stifle his government by using the excuse of Delhi not being a full state. The Delhi lieutenant governor thus became a more powerful political instrument than the Delhi state BJP. To his credit, Kejriwal managed to outmanoeuvre the BJP on this. Free electricity alone was enough to ensure his victory.
Since then, the BJP has been countering Arvind Kejriwal politically. Kapil Mishra of the BJP incites communal violence, the Amit Shah-controlled Delhi Police is found looking the other way if not actually participating in the violence themselves, and Arvind Kejriwal draws all the flak.
Kejriwal does not want to be seen playing the secular card, and neither does he want to be seen playing the communal card. He gets the worst of both worlds. Petrol bombs are found in the terrace of a Muslim councillor, and Arvind Kejriwal has to immediately sack him. Kapil Mishra gets to take out a peace march, where slogans like “shoot the traitors” are raised.
There’s another leader who is playing neither-communal-nor-secular card: Nitish Kumar. The only difference is that he gets away with the contradiction because the BJP won’t attack its own ally.
If Kejriwal thought the crisis was over, and there were five years for the world to forget the Delhi riots, he was mistaken because pat came another crisis. Not only is Delhi a Covid-19 hotspot (the government has identified 76 ‘containment zones’), but it is also a migrant hub. And Arvind Kejriwal was found wanting in his migrant response.
He could well say the Narendra Modi government planned the lockdown hastily, did not think about migrants, and that he is not at fault. But he won’t be able to say that, because he is the chief minister of Delhi, a unique chair that has responsibility without much power. This is not to exonerate Kejriwal, who has come across as lacking even in empathy, in both these crises: riots and migrant labourers stuck in lockdown.
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Resistance is futile
A simple way out for Kejriwal today would be to attack the BJP and the Modi government, but he has realised it would be a suicidal strategy, as he saw the last time he tried it. So he has gone to the opposite end of sounding like a BJP chief minister. That is not turning out to be very useful either, since the BJP is attacking him more than ever before. Be it Delhi riots or migrant workers’ crisis, Kejriwal is the fall guy.
Regardless of the number of press conferences he does, promises he makes, and new schemes he announces, Arvind Kejriwal will continue to look like a diminishing leader since he has practically surrendered before Modi-Amit Shah. As a succinct headline in The Telegraph put it, “Looks like Arvind, sounds like Modi.”
This is a thankless situation to be in. Kejriwal is being nice to Modi but the BJP and the pro-BJP media still attacks him. The BJP and the Modi government’s policies create tensions and Kejriwal draws the flak.
It is obvious that appeasing the Modi establishment is not enough for Arvind Kejriwal. He must join it. The BJP’s attacks on him will stop. He will then be able to comfortably enjoy the chief minister’s chair without having to bother much about his political image on a daily basis. In other words, become Nitish Kumar.
This would mean Arvind Kejriwal also giving up on his pipe dream of going national and becoming prime minister. Once again, he could learn from Nitish Kumar to be realistic and practical. It’s not happening. Arvind Kejriwal and the Aam Aadmi Party are doomed forever to be a Delhi-centric party.
Joining the NDA, however, may have the benefit of becoming part of the Akali Dal-BJP coalition in Punjab, thus having a realistic chance of taking on Congress’ Amarinder Singh. Having already apologised to Bikram Singh Majithia, Kejriwal should have no problem with this arrangement.
When Nitish Kumar ditched the Mahagathbandhan in Bihar and re-joined the NDA in 2017, he famously announced, “Nobody can defeat Modi in 2019.” It was this cold calculation about the future that made Nitish do a complete U-turn on his promise of never joining hands with the BJP again. Since Arvind Kejriwal seems to think similarly about Modi’s invincibility, he should come to a similar conclusion.
The author is contributing editor to ThePrint. Views are personal.