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Hum AAP ke hain kaun?
Or how to scale up a relationship

By Ashwini Bhatnagar
Editor-in-Chief
WriteConnectIndia.com

All journalism begins or leads to some sort of activism and AAP is a direct result of one such activism. So, as a journalist, I feel a connect with AAP in a way that relates my social concerns with visible tangible socio-political change. We are therefore related.
But the relationship is at least once removed as journalistic intellectual activism considers street-level connection as its country cousin. Hacks like me love to lecture and observe from a smug vantage position rather than get down to flag waving on the streets. The masses are separate from us. We are the intellectuals; thought leaders who are only responsible for their discourse and not the action thereupon.
But we have recently fallen upon strange times. The country cousin has turned hip and thought has started following activism. The men and women on the streets waving the AAP flags have achieved the distant and figurative goals of intellectual thought in just one small lunge changing Indian democracy by its 'thoughtless' action. It is difficult to reconcile to country cousin becoming fashionable as it is to concede that AAP is now THE conversation the nation is having with itself and coming out conclusions which trump interlocutors like me.
AAP is not about Arvind Kejriwal. As a leader too he's incidental to the cause. His appeal is not in his personal charisma. It is rather in the fact that the impossible was made possible so easily.
A few months ago all of us 'thought' politics was impossible and the Indian political system was beyond redemption. We stood by and watched haplessly as political street walkers paraded their assets brazenly. The political class gloated over its invincibility since the raktbheej of the system could only produce clones of the politician whose DNA repelled genuine public interest. It was, we declared, an impossible-impossible situation. Tch-tch.
The turnaround happened in one small magical moment - the Anna Hazare fast over the Jan Lokpal Bill. True, Anna had fasted before. True also Anna had felled many a corrupt minister in his home state Maharashtra. True he came to the centre stage with a Gandhi-like appeal and his endearing toothless smile. But all this would have been incidental and event-related if Kejriwal and his team had not conjured up the means to scale up the model.
As a journalist I have seen many simple, honest, endearing and committed people launching and sustaining social movements. They have been successful in their own way by engaging people to secure remedial action even from the most obstinate of the governments. But all of them so far had remained localised. They couldn't be scaled up from being local to national in terms of appeal, fervour, issues and commitment.
In fact, AAP became AAP because it moved away from the confines of Anna's Jan Lokpal Bill movement and broad based it to the issue of corruption and governance. Anna's fast could go only a particular distance. It was unfit to go the whole way.
The trick was in the scale. The simple solution to the impossible political situation was to combine earnestness of purpose with its propagation. Anna didn't see the potential of scale; he was happy with the earnestness of his own self and that of his local band of supporters. Kejriwal saw it differently because he understood the dramatic difference scale could make. He knew a viable model is one which can be scaled up almost indefinitely.
Scaling also ensures a broad base and broader the base the less chances there are of a vertical collapse. Furthermore, multiplicity of stakeholders in terms of mass participation and alternate choices means long term sustainability. Hence, AAP moved from demanding a change in government to the change of the current political class. The issues were scaled up along with the size of AAP's quest.
In other words, the enthusiasm in the country today has shifted from replacing the Congress with the BJP. It is now about replacing both and all others with a new political class as defined by AAP. In other words, replacement politics has been scaled up to alternate politics, which in turn has moved from being just a 'thought' to actionable 'thought'. Impossible is now in the grasp of the very possible.
IIMs grads routinely learn how to build business models which can be successively ramped up. However, the Indian political model across parties and NG0s were self limiting to region, class, caste or interest groups. Kejriwal tinkered innovatively with the political model and made successive scaling possible. TDP, SP, BSP, TMC, the Left, BJD et al have all had opportunities to scale up but they had no Kejriwal to do it for them.
Technology has been Kejriwal's big ally in this breakthrough but more than just technology it is the way it has been deployed in the scaling up that has made the difference. The BJP and the Congress crib about the TV space AAP gets but forget to address themselves to why it gets this space. It was not because journalists were going out of their way to help AAP; rather because AAP scaled up to the next news level and refreshed the debate. The news ramp up has lessons for both Modi and Rahul G but these lessons may not be of use to them now -- AAP has already clogged up the messaging network!
The distant cousin that I mentioned earlier seems like a real brother today. The journalist is now not just thought but actionable thought. It is a happy meeting which answers the question hum aap ke kaun hai with a (pun intended) response: hum hai AAP, janab.

Arrey Akhilesh Bhaiya
A laconic reading of UP CM's mindset

By Ashwini Bhatnagar

Akhilesh bhaiya is truly blessed. He has a charming personality which wins friends easily. He's easy going and amiable and almost fits the bill for the first few qualifications stipulated in Dale Carnige's catalogue on How to Win Friends and Influence People.
He used the charms to ride piggy back of his father's political legacy and the failings of the political biggie Mayawati and come to power in May last year. His father's struggles in Uttar Pradesh's political akhara and Mayawati 'monumental' obsessions made it easy for him to grab a historic electoral victory. He was feted and cheered, sometimes raucously or too loudly, but admittedly he was the Great Young Hope.
All deaths are sombre events but a young death is heart wrenching. Akhilesh Bhaiya had been blessed with a full term, he could live to it with the muscle of majority under his command. The world, in a manner of speaking, was his oyster.
It still is. The Great Young Hope is not dead yet. But the prognosis is not encouraging at all. Perhaps, the first symptoms were visible at the swearing in itself when hooliganism took centre stage. A little later, power wrangling usurped the spotlight. Minority leaders wanted majority share, family kin professed divine kingship rights. The Great Young Hope stared at despair.
Anyone would have sunk in this quagmire but as I had said earlier Akhilesh Bhaiya is truly blessed. The brute majority of his father's party in the Assembly is a huge blessing. The Union government's dependence on Dad's outfit for survival in the Lok Sabha is another such mana from heaven. Nothing can cause sudden death. The vital signs of Bhaiya's body politic are okay right now.
May be Akhilesh Bhaiya is relaxed because there are no shivers yet. May be he thinks that five years is a long time for any disease to wear itself out even in the absence of political antibiotics; or, just may be, he thinks all's right with the world, and what is this fuss about?
Of course, there is much ado about nothing. Questions about Muzaffarnagar riot victims irritate Akhilesh Bhaiya. Why does every one want to hurry up the settlement of their plight? Why do they want him to be hands on on the situation in a western part of the state? Why do they want him to roll up his sleeves and dive deep into the muck of state administration when he's not responsible of it anyway? It is Behenji who heaped it earlier and now it is the chachas and taus and other heaven begotten uncles. Where is he responsible?
No man should shrug his responsibilities and Akhilesh Bhaiya manly shoulders his own. He was at the MOU signing ceremony with a respected industrialist. He has made his speeches at media hosted enclaves and he was there at Safai for the grand carnival to celebrate village life in filmy style. Those who ask for more, really ask for too much.
Only the truly innocent are genuinely blessed. Rahul Gandhi is, in a manner of speaking, Akhilesh Bhaiya's heavenly brother. Rahul G in his divine innocence rolled up his sleeves on scores of dias' to demonstrate he meant business. It didn't occur to his baby innocence that after rolling up your sleeves you have to put your hands to work.
Again, he addressed conclaves to assure himself he could call muck by its first name when he saw it. He knew it but would do nothing about it till Aam Adami came up with a popular How-to-do- it manual. It then dawned on him that there is much to learn from it.
Akhilesh Bhaiya, it seems, is waiting for a similar learning manual for himself.
God is kind and perhaps he will deliver all the learning to Bhaiya in one fell swoop. He may thus pave the way for Akhilesh Bhaiya to wrest the outcome of the Lok Sabha poll from the clutches of political adversaries. Popular discontent is hardly an issue with someone who is as blessed as Akhilesh Bhaiya.
Doom sayers aren't believers. They are wiley foxes out to prey on the innocent. What they don't know is that at the end it is the young and the pure, those who haven't dirtied their hands and those who look at the world with rose tinted glasses are the ones who will inherit the world. A miracle is waiting to happen, relax Akhilesh Bhaiya.

The political phantom or Phantom, the Ghost who Walks, whichever way you choose to image her, has mystery, mystique, invincibility and hence certain charisma attached to it. The appeal of Mayawati in fact lies in the aura of an ivory tower existence. She is the Lonely Queen living in isolated splendor. A charitable Queen devoted to the cause of the underprivileged, writes Ashwini Bhatnagar in the fourth part of the series.

Why I love Mayawati—IV

She is a political phantom!

To me, Mayawati is a political phantom. A few days back, I used this phrase with some of my journalist friends and it brought to them images of the comic-book character Phantom, who lived in the jungles of Africa and came out of his skull-shaped cave to vanquish the villains trying to defile his hidden paradise.
Of course, I hadn’t meant Phantom, the Ghost who Walks, of our teenage years. I had used it more in the sense of an apparition, a sort of vision which is here and yet not there; an apparition which is seen and heard and whose presence is felt by a special few. For others, Mayawati is yet another shadowy tale for the night around the fire.
Mayawati has indeed been a political phantom during the last five years. The popular image is (as seen on TV screens) of one who floats out of a side door of a large room makes a few clinical pronouncements and disappears even before you can say Behenji aloud. She’s is a fleeting image for nearly all of us, as real or unreal as any phantom of our mind can be.
She is also the comic book Phantom, protected by her own set of pygmies and living a lifestyle which may make even the richest sultan of the world, the Sultan of Brunei, jealous. Like Phantom, she is quick on the draw and can track down the invaders to her domain with a zealous intent.
The political phantom or Phantom, the Ghost who Walks, whichever way you choose to image her, has mystery, mystique, invincibility and hence certain charisma attached to it. The appeal of Mayawati, despite what her detractor may say, in fact lies in the aura of an ivory tower existence. She is the Lonely Queen living in isolated splendor. A charitable Queen devoted to the cause of the underprivileged.
This is not an extravagant description; indeed, it’s a realistic one. Despite a rather lower than expected outcome in the 2009 parliamentary elections, Mayawati did not change her routine. She was not bothered by it. The UP Assembly Poll 2012 is about five weeks away and she is not yet bothered. Her confidence stems from the fact that her core vote bank of the Dalits has not eroded in any way. Mayawati still commands their confidence and all the charges leveled against her of corruption, arrogance and splurging on memorials and statues of herself by the Congress and the Samajwadi Party, have not changed the way her constituency views her. She is their Queen Bee.
There, however, is some debate on whether the ‘social engineering’ formula devised by her in the 2007 can deliver the required results in 2012. The Dalits etc vote bank had joined hands with the Brahmin vote then to give her a clear majority in the House. Brahmins are little wary of her this time around, say political pundits, and their loss of interest may prompt a drastic 50 per cent fall in her seat share. In other words, Behenji is all set for a serious drubbing come February 2012.
But has the social engineering formula really collapsed? Yes, say some shrewd political watchers. The Brahmins voted for her in 2007 because Samajwadi Party had to be outed. The Congress and the BJP were totally fragmented and directionless then. Their winnability factor was at its nadir. The BSP was the only choice. Craftily, the analyst say, the Brahmins threw in their lot with the potential winner, the BSP, and Mayawati was sworn in as Chief Minister for a full term. The strategy helped the Brahmins to enjoy the fruits of power in a Dalit government – no mean achievement by itself!
But 2012 will be different. The sins of Mulayam Singh Yadav government have been forgotten, if not forgiven. The Congress is being led belligerently by Rahul Gandhi and today more than one political option is available to the electorate. Mayawati may therefore lose out and her Brahmin support base may largely migrate to the Congress and/or the BJP.
There is also the anti incumbency factor. The bureaucracy, it is said, cannot stand her whimsical ways and her style of functioning through a tight coterie. Her phantom image has also not endeared her to the middle class or even the lower middle class. She has not shown in any way that she’s a peoples’ CM. A people -friendly government and personalized, accessible leadership may be preferred over Mayawati’s soundproofed deodorized governance.
Add to this Rahul Gandhi’s promise that he will be the de facto CM of UP, if not de jure, if his party is voted to power. The promise of seamless flow of funds from the Centre to the state because of Rahul, who is also a prime ministerial candidate, may well become the proverbial push coming to a shove in toppling Mayawati from power.
But pre poll calculations are what all calculations are—they reveal the important but conceal the vital. We still don’t know what is going to be that vital thing which may swing the vote one way or the other. Perhaps, the political phantom may do what all phantoms are supposed to do – over awe the voter with a series of numbing apparitional moves to dramatically sn**ch victory out of the jaws of defeat. Mayawati is quite capable of it. Just wait, and do watch the Phantom of the Opera in the interregnum.
More in my next post.