A hurriedly formed liberal team, however progressive, with an aim too high and too ill-conceived without a thorough estimation of the objective and subjective conditions is equally prone to disintegrate with a bang. And the disintegrated parts are then quite likely to coalesce with those regressive yet dominant elements whom they had supposedly declared a war against. The recent reported decision of merger of the AAP team in West Bengal with the BJP is probably the best recent example in this regard. One of my respected and learned friends yesterday had posed an interesting question in this regard: What is AAP (Aam Admi Party)? a) SAP, b) YAP, c) MAP, d) PAP, e) All of the above. [The abbreviations in the options have a sarcastic connotations in hindi.] And here is how Ill like to briefly answer the question posed. AAP is more a phenomenon (with its positives and negatives) that was a consequence of the issue of corruption intended to be tackled within the framework of the existing political system and structure assumed inherently non-corrupt, than a party. As a result it had to sooner or later face the consequences of its own assumptions, methodology, actions and contradictions. And hence, AAP is in a way neither of them. While the phenomenon was necessary (though bound within the limited urban and semi-urban middle class section), the methodology was definitely a wrong one given the distorted and shallow assumptions. [Regarding the shallowness in their assumptions and ideas, I had dealt with in details quite often earlier, and hence is skipping that part of the discussion right now. Intend to prepare a more comprehensive one on the various issues later soon.] The hurry in the process of coming to a extra-simplistic and comfortable conclusion (that the existing political parties and their members are corrupt and the malfunctioning of the system of governance is due to that only and hence can be rectified by the simple democratic replacement of those parties and members by the ones from their party whose members are the common people – as if they come from Mars and hence not corrupt – who will work within the existing framework for the greater interest of the aam admi without any resort to corruption) and to implement the same without any through theoretical and practical analysis had to face the consequences it has (surely more to follow). They thus redefined corruption in isolation and yet practiced it as various indicators showed. Despite all these, I must admit that was indeed a limited but bold experiment whose results are clear enough for us to learn from provided we intend to, particularly when none seemed ready to go a different way. I hope that the AAP activists and sympathizers will learn a good lesson and decide to look deep into the issue, not in isolation. As another learned friend had observed something like this: AAP is lees important as a party and more important as a phenomenon with all its natural and consequential flaws. The need is to broaden the phenomenon thoroughly and uncompromisingly with bare minimum assumptions, and the broadest of challenges.
Posted on: Sat, 07 Jun 2014 04:43:11 +0000
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