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Delhi votes : The anguish of the common man
Swati Deb
Eight to nine months is pretty long time in politics. On February 14, 2014, Arvind Kejriwal was an ‘anarchist’ and an image of a failed Chief Minister. On May 16, 2014 when the Lok Sabha elections results came in, besides the glorification of the ‘Modi phenomenon’, the major take away was that Kejriwal’s AAP was written off. The party drew a blank in its original ‘karmabhoomi’ and lost all 7 Lok Sabha seats in Delhi and elsewhere could not make any mark. It had contested over 300 seats and won only 4 seats in Punjab. Kejriwal himself was humbled in Varanasi.
But by February 10, 2015 the table had turned the other way reflecting the real arsenal power of the capital’s ‘common man’. In a landslide victory and not even conceived by pollsters and political wisdom of rival parties, AAP won as many as 67 seats and Congress was reduced to zero. For its part, BJP, overconfident of the ‘Modi wave’ was no better reduced to just winning 3 seats of the 70 assembly seats. In December 2013, BJP had won 32 seats. The vote shares were equally shocker for Prime Minster Narendra Modi. This is for the first time since 2002, he has been vanquished in elections.
The AAP had slice of 54.3 per cent as against 32.2 of BJP while a modest all time low 9.7 per cent for grand old Congress.
The AAP victory and Kejriwal’s return as the Delhi chief minister was predicted by most opinion and exit polls. The BJP also knew they had a tough fight. But it goes without saying the scale of BJP’s devastating loss was just not apprehended.
On February 10, 2015, long before the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) started to work, the Delhi battle 2015 was already described as a watershed in the history of India, something just within 8-9 months since Prime Minister Modi had led his party to steal a convincing victory in the general elections.
There were many factors to Delhi’s angry mandate.
In the words of a BJP Minister, who campaigned aggressively as PM Modi’s foot soldier, “the mandate and the results showed it clearly that the Delhi people were eagerly looking forward to give AAP and Arvind Kejriwal another chance”.
“It was not an election but a Tsunami,” remarked senior journalist Vidyarthi Kumar.
Among many factors attributed for AAP victory and BJP’s unprecedented defeat included that the Prime Minister’s alleged silence on highly unwarranted episodes like Ghar Wapsi (re-conversion) and attacks on churches had heightened fears of religious intolerance. This had certainly alienated Muslims and Christians and on the other hand the Hindu voters were annoyed as they never approved of communal rhetoric of the BJP leaders.
While there is a link of the Delhi mandate to the Modi’s “eloquent silence” on the alleged Hindutva agenda and the Prime Minister’s autocratic style of functioning, many say, the ‘angry Delhiites’ verdict’ is actually linked to the neo-liberal economic and political forces those have set in urban India and especially in Delhi.
“The Delhi mandate is a lesson to learn for BJP and Congress and also all established political class. The disparity between rich and poor even in country’s capital is frightening. A huge army of lower middle class wants to rise up the ladder. The massive public frustration is only growing,” says educationist Prof Shital Kaur.
This school of thought believes as a result of ‘neo-communist’ promises made by AAP including from free wifi and halved electricity bill and setting up 20 new colleges simply floored Delhiites. Thus Kejriwal could expand his middle-class base as Delhiites generally including Hindus thought Modi was getting his priorities changed from ‘people welfare’ in the country to winning over world leaders like Barack Obama.
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