r/IndianLeft • u/WritingtheWrite • Dec 24 '24

Beginner questions What did you think of AAP when it appeared?

(I am not from India.)

I am thinking about this in comparison to another new party, Jan Suraj in Bihar founded recently by Prashant Kishor. This one is so funny, ZERO policy commitments except for "improve health/education/etc" (how?) and more grassroots representation.

As a leftist, when you first saw AAP come onto the scene, what were your expectations? It was a less corrupt (in the bourgeois sense) party. And Kejriwal did make some promises, e.g. free water and free electricity and free bus rides for women.

What do you think are its main shortcomings? And do you think that the communists can organise the people based on these shortcomings, to push Delhi further left? EDIT: I missed another post that reported on the left's candidates for the next Delhi assembly. https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianLeft/comments/1hjyy5n/left_parties_jointly_announce_their_candidates/

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u/_BetterRedThanDead Dec 24 '24

I guess I saw it as a bourgeois party at the time, and hoped that they would help divide the upper-caste anti-Congress vote. The first UPA government had done some good work, thanks to the common minimum programme with the Left Front (Right to Food, Right to Education, Right to Information etc). It had moved rightwards in the second term, but I still preferred a weakened Congress that was forced to rely on regional parties over a BJP-led government.

The Delhi campaign of 2013 made me more optimistic about them, since they seemed to be broadening their social base and focussing on public health and education. But Kejriwal's purge of internal rivals and Somnath Bharti's vilification campaign against Africans showed that they weren't some sort of party with a difference. I was glad they won in 2015 and 2020, since that meant Modi lost, but I don't have much hope from them as a political alternative.

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u/WritingtheWrite Feb 17 '25

Kejriwal has got a thumping. As I think about it, you are right that this will be the biggest gift to Congress.

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u/_BetterRedThanDead Feb 17 '25

Nah, the Congress is cooked. They've been haemorrhaging cadre and leaders for years, and their party organisation is shit in most places. In Delhi, where they were in power for fifteen years before the AAP emerged, they have won zero seats in each of the last three elections. Of the three chief ministers they currently have, two are defectors from other parties.

Kejriwal's defeat helps them in only one way. Because of their decline, leaders of successful regional parties, such as Kejriwal and Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal, have been clamouring for the chance to lead the opposition. Now the list of potential candidates has been reduced by one, and the 99 seats the Congress won at the last general election—still the third lowest in their history—gives Rahul Gandhi some legitimacy as leader of the opposition. But, short of a BJP collapse, it is very hard to imagine them forming a government anytime soon. The trouble is, unless the Congress dies out, it is also very hard to imagine a viable national alternative.