AAP enters Suicide Mode Prof. Arun Kumar a noted economist and a member of an AAP committee on national issues who wrote a brilliant piece on the economics of water distribution in Delhi decided to withdraw from AAP today after the drama that has unfolded in the capital. Mallika Sarabhai, the famous danseuse who had challenged Modi on his home turf will probably follow suit. Is the post ideological social compact imagined by Yogendra YAdav falling apart right after its taking off. The harmony of the wolf and the sheep without the baggage of established social collaboration enforcing structures like caste and identity, under the blanket Ethical-economic unifier of corruption and nation had charmed many Indians from the middle classes who were in search of new structure pretending not to subscribe to the earlier structures. Many on the Left were also charmed by the possibility of a new unfolding and a new kind of mass politics that the AAP was bringing into indian political scene. But like any movement the AAP movement had to face the contradictions that they themselves inherited from existing structure. The acid test of a force of change is how it deals with these contradictions, does it struggle against it, transform the masses affiliated to it and keep a positive progressive model of change in front of the society. This is the HARD HONEST PATH Of Social Transformation. There are examples in history where parties have taken this route and changed a society. The communist parties of erstwhile Soviet Union and Eastern Europe had materially accomplished these against feudalism and gender inequality. (Many can differ on this issue and endlessly cite US sponsored data and propaganda) the Glorious struggle of Spanish Civil war under communist and anarchist leadership had deeply affected the hearts and minds of spanish people against feudalism, capitalism and gender inequality. But there is also a short cut, a cynical brushing aside of the principled struggles for pragmatic goals. The AAP seems to have taken the second route by launching this drama in order to shift focus from the racist attacks by one of its ministers. With AAP not taking an upfront stance against the repeated misogynist, casteist and anti-muslim sentiments publicly exhibited by Kumar Viswas and Somnath Bharti while publicly disowning the democratic demands of taking Kasmiri and adivasi Opinion on Board made by Prashant Bhushan, the trajectory of AAP is getting clear with each passing day. The promise of reform cannot be fulfilled without a will to change the status quo. Neither can it legitimize itself without clarifying the ideological underpinnings of each and every solution that it chooses to provide. The Grand New Party seems to postpone these basic elements of politics for a long period riding on popular outrage against the existing system. The problem is the existing system has tremendous power generated by its ideological clarity and entrenched structures. It has not failed to deliver but it has denied to deliver for promoting the interest of the classes it represent. It can loosen the levers the moment it sees the sustainability of its political economic project challenged. To face such an enemy one needs a party that challenges the political-economic foundations of the system by mobilizing and educating the masses. The AAP seems to ride the Hobby horse and fiddle with regressive mind set which are also products of the system. As media glare diffuses and AAP gets embroiled into a fruitless useless struggle that will soon become a war of attrition too costly for AAP trying to pitch for the Loksabha election. It once again proves the old leftist cliche for a revolution you need a party with revolutionary theory. AAP seems to disown it like many leftists who wants to join its post-ideological bandwagon. Making politics entirely a matter of tactics without the guidance of broader strategy, AAP attempts the most tempting and yet impossible path of social transformation through the opportunist short cut. The result is showing within 21 days where the entire AAP is defending the indefensible in Delhi and allowing the opposition forces to sharpen its arguments against it across the nation. AAP rising may register its name in Indian history as the shortest political upheavel in India but what happens to the opportunists from the left who had long term ambitions attached to it. - Aniket Prantadarshi
Posted on: Tue, 21 Jan 2014 09:46:26 +0000
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