While the victory of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was assured, no one expected the nearly invincible juggernaut called the Bharatiya Janata Party to be reduced to 3 seats in the Delhi elections. The less said about the Congress the better! This Party looks like it is hell bent on defeating itself. The BJP is accused of loathsome hubris which has got the aam aadmi’s goat particularly when Prime Minister Narendra Modi flaunted a suit that would have shocked any aam aadmi with his name embossed as pin stripes. The Delhi elections are a lesson that political parties anywhere need to learn. First, you cannot take the common man for granted all the time. Second, the population profile of Delhi is such that there are more aam aadmi (ordinary citizen) today in that city than the khaas log (elite). The number of people living under plastic sheets (jhuggi jhopris) number about half a million and these are the people who have been promised a roof over their heads, free water and free electricity. Who would not vote for such freebies!
While there have been vocal sections of the Delhi populace who feel that the BJP is subsidising the rich capitalists anyway and a few sops for the needy is just a pinch off the national budget, the idea of subsidising the needs of half a million poor is indeed an ambitious project. For the AAP the honeymoon begins immediately. The poor can be very exacting when to comes to demanding their rights. And they have been duly empowered to speak up and make their voices heard. They will speak louder now under the auspices of their surrogate social leaders who have really taken up cudgels on their behalf. Arvind Kejriwal therefore has no time to waste in dharnas and vigilantism. He has to deliver and quickly. Now he has the majority so there are no excuses of being hamstrung by any other party.
For the BJP this is time to take stock about what went wrong although that is pretty obvious. Foisting Kiran Bedi a rank newcomer was a bad idea. Add to that the bungling on the manifesto and attacks on minorities. The Indian janta wants to get on with development and has no time for communal frenzy. As far as the Congress is concerned it still does not seem to have learnt any lesson yet. The Party rank and file do not have the character to speak up against the dynasty. Yet it is the dynasty that has pulled the Party down!