AAP – The Participatory Democracy perspective

To brand AAP movement as Messianic is only to miss the wood for the trees. The role of the founder members in this uprising was only incidental: anybody, with conviction and tenacity of purpose would have galvanized the victims of the corrupt system to launch the movement (party), because the fertile ground for such an uprising existed and the objective conditions so demanded it. The major trigger to the discontent was the newly found awareness that nepotism and cronyism are tickets to success: special privileges in the lucrative business world that ‘friends’ seem so easily able to obtain, resonated strongly throughout the country. Of course this is not to devalue their contribution. However, individuals have a role, but only to the extent as the proverbial ‘the butterfly paradigm’, (flapping of the wings of a butterfly in Brazil leading to a storm in Texas’), a scientific phenomenon, would testify. They laid the basic foundation for the launch of the movement (culminating into a political party) to evolve and gave the crucial initial push as the starting point, without which AAP would have taken off in the first place. Subsequently, the movement, like the internet, evolved, as system modelling experts have shown, quite spontaneously, steered or governed by all sorts of highly complex self-reinforcing mechanisms, the outcomes of long drawn-out evolutionary processes: the whole movement emerged without any organisational backing or well-trained cadre to mobilise support. AAP is, thus, a self- created and self- sustaining phenomenon. And in all fairness, like the net neutrality, the AAP cannot be monopolised by an individual or a group, to eclipse others: it would then become a closed platform which would be against the cardinal principal of participatory and inclusive democracy. The process was set in motion because the movement was perceived as a saviour by the alienated masses, who had been forced to the edge of hopelessness, obviating the necessity to resign themselves to their wretched condition and not let the exclusion persist any longer. 

Differences are all matters of detail, and a consensus can be easily worked out to everybody’s satisfaction, if the intention is to adhere to the basic objective of attaining Swaraj. If the nuances in approach to issues represent different value judgements in the party, then to address these specific concerns and anxieties by accommodating them would only fortify the movement, and should be welcome. But, if this multiplicity is the emergent property of the dictum ‘the rich exploit the poor and the poor fight among themselves’ and acquires narcissistic overtones, it will be a self- inflicting tragedy. We must remember the maxim that everybody can be right provided one does not insist oneself to be the only one to be right. Lobby and coterie culture is anathema to AAP paradigm, for the bond which holds such formations together is complicity in a common crime. The ‘social temperature’ in the country, to borrow the phrase from the lexicon of ‘social physics’, is rising and the linkages of the unholy nexus crumbling. This calls for a total revolution and all political parties, especially the AAP has the foremost duty of focusing the discourse of the movement to systemic overhaul, and they must seize the opportunity and rise to the occasion. The left parties have already started an exercise in introspection. The Janta Parivar is struggling to emerge in a new avatar to meet the challenge of the parasitic class. The need of the hour is to reach out to forge linkages with likeminded outfits, political and social (activists), and not indulge in the luxury of devastating the home turf. Mind you, the evolutionary paradigm has a stern warning for all political parties as an analogy: “only those who can adapt and change will survive” (Allen).

Of course, there will always be some loose ends and imponderables in the implementation of a novel idea. But these uncertainties should not disorient us and make us lose the sense of direction and the destination. It is best to leave them to the evolutionary process to be sorted out. It may be of some interest to remember, that all of us made our beginning in the ‘primordial soup’ millions of years ago in a very humble way, and in a shape not very flattering. The only substantive issue which is at stake and which needs to be seriously addressed is the political robustness of the model of alternative politics, epitomised in the road map of the AAP. It is pertinent to point out that the new structure has emerged as a consensus after wide spread consultation and a thorough debate in the country. It will be unfortunate if the realisation of the dream remains elusive, in spite of all the media hype to promise a fair deal to meet the new aspirations of the millions of the marginalized sections of the society.