Yesterday I attended a public meeting Aam Adami Party AAP. It is no coincidence that the last time I had attended any political meeting was of Janata Party in 1977. Fade up by Indira Gandhi’s draconian rule, nation was looking at the united opposition party to bring about miraculous change. Today many people are looking at all political parties as parties united in corruption and cheating of electorate. AAP may be the miracle that of change. I repeat, ‘may’. It is a nascent party. It may fail or it may bring in fundamental changes in Indian polity.
It is with purpose that AAP was formed on 26th Novemeber, 2012. 26th November being the Constitution Day of India. AAP vows to adhere to the basic principles of the Constitution which asserts that each and every individual has right to live with honour and dignity.
Lot has happened since then. Foremost in the people’s mind is AAP’s resignation from Delhi Government. Remember, Delhi voters did not give clear verdict. No party/coalition got majority, BJP being the largest party. Usually BJP would have staked claim for forming the government, saying it will ‘gather’ numbers by the time it faces assembly. But it chickened out, afraid of people’s expectations of ‘clean’ government monitored by AAP in opposition. For 2-3 weeks Delhi was without government. Same BJP, and Congress started accusing AAP, their common enemy, of running away from responsibility. Faced by the dilema of opportunity to demonstrate principles and threat of being cheated after forming government, it took the gamble of forming the government. At the time AAP made it absolutely clear that it follow items on its election manifesto and will resign if stopped from acting on any of those items. In 49 days following it started one by one. When BJP and Congress joined hands to stop it from passing Jan Lokpal Bill, AAP resigned. It is not running away from responsibility but is an act of courage, it is an act of commitment to what you had committed.
All this is past. What has happened since then, since the declaration of Loksabha elections is most astounding. Let me just quickly list some of those:
- This new party without experience has managed to review and select more than 400 candidates in less than 4 weeks, in 36 states/UTs with significant number of them being women. Profiles of all candidates are available on AAP website and a quick search indicates that candidates are from diverse sections of society, diverse in age and experience too. Nowhere does the profile mentions cast and religion.
- This is party fielding largest number of candidates
- Since 12th December, 2013 it has received nearly Rs21 crores of donations from nearly 80,000 individuals from 107 countries, 37 states/UTs.
- The complete list with pie charts is available on AAP website.
- It is the only party to attempt to give Income-Expenditure statements. Unaudited statements till July, 2013 are available on website
- It is the only (or one of very few) party to say that political parties should be covered under RTI
- It is the only party vouching to get Lokpal Bill to include its own PM and ministers.
- Its candidates have said they will declare their assets every year with explanation for increase, if any.
- After declaration of List of Candidates it was pointed out that 10 candidates have criminal records. After initial check they have removed 2 from the list. Of the remaining, barring those who have charged for protests etc, action will be taken in 2 days. No other party has done this.
- It is the only party vowed to removed corruption through clean governance, transparency and participation
- It is the party which has potential to get volunteerism back into Indian politics. People are willing to ‘volunteer’ because they have trust in AAP candidates.
- There are no paid volunteers. People are working on their own on week days, week ends, evenings whatever. People from high rises are voluntarily walking the dirty by lanes of poor neighbourhoods, and look happy to know about an India new to them
- They are ridiculed for going to people for decisions. But actually, it is looking to bring in participative ways of decision making, as envisaged by fathers of our constitution. (To my knowledge) only Switzerland and some Scandanavian countries have systems where governments will go to people to seek their views. But AAP is looking to go even further where decisions are evolved, as much as possible. Naturally there is and will be lot of discussions, debates, opinions. This is going appear as chaos to us because we are used only to political parties governed from the top.
‘अाप’ का राज
अापही का राज
आपही के लिए
