Battleground Delhi: Round Two – An excerpt from ‘Capital Contest: How AAP and Kejriwal Won Delhi’

Delhi, the capital of India. With more than 19 million (1.9 crore) people, it is among the world’s most populous agglomerations. Delhi’s population is more than that of 10 other Indian states, including Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura. By 2028, Delhi is set to become the most populous city on earth, according to the United Nations (UN). So, the city/state of Delhi is neither small geographically, nor insignificant numerically.

The political fortunes of the capital always weigh much heavier than its size. What happened in the capital in the 2020 assembly elections is the story of the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) victory, and it is a story that needs to be told because it is a rare and momentous milestone in the political history of the nation.

While AAP’s 2013 assembly victory had taken by surprise a nation beleaguered by charges of corruption and the seeming power of privilege of the Congress party that had been ruling for too many years, it is AAP’s victory in the 2020 assembly elections that needs to be studied more closely. The 2020 Delhi elections were one of the most bitterly fought elections in recent times with the chief minister (CM), Arvind Kejriwal, who had called himself an ‘anarchist’ many years ago, being labelled by the central government leaders as a ‘terrorist’ and accused of buying voters.

By this time, the AAP had been in power for a full five-year term and the 2020 elections came on the back of a crushing defeat for the AAP by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2019 national elections. The challenger, Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi and his juggernaut, were unstoppable. The BJP was taking this battle against the AAP, head-on. The BJP and PM Modi had much to reach out to the public with. The PM stood tall with numerous wins under his belt—public acclaim for the Balakot surgical strike against terror camps in Pakistan; the Supreme Court’s landmark verdict allowing the Ram Mandir to be built where there used to be a masjid, thus meeting the aspirations of the majority of Hindus in India; a following from the hundreds of thousands of majoritarians, convinced that the only future for the country was with the BJP and that the party would bring back the glory of the Hindutva way of life. In such an atmosphere, it was as if there was not the slightest space for anyone else to even try to take a shot at any level of leadership. The 2020 Delhi elections were close on the heels of a very communalized situation surrounding protests against the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA). Long before election day 2020, several media commentators and strategists had already called the battle for Delhi as won and lost.

And yet, as journalists, we had personally witnessed the birth of the most improbable government in Delhi, a government made of maverick do-gooders, most with zero experience in either politics or governance at a national level, for a country the scale of India! What they lacked in experience, they made up for with passion and enthusiasm, often leaving a trail of chaos behind. But by 2019, the AAP, with a little over five years of having been at the helm of affairs, had gained some maturity through its experience of having learnt in the actual doing.
The party was striving to reach out to the people of Delhi and to meet their aspirations. Their leader Kejriwal was a man who prided himself on an equal mix of integrity and a belief in playing Superman to ensure that his government delivered what it had promised. In many ways, his government was going to be different, both from those that had gone before him, and from those who were his contemporaries in other states.

In this book, we meet the key players in CM Kejriwal’s team, who tell us how they went from victory to despair and back to victory again. They have been the key architects of the party and its victory.

As journalists, we have reported on what the AAP was claiming it had done for the people of Delhi. Like them, we were surprised by the real results in the community. The mohalla clinics gave people a chance to get a check-up closer home, without waiting hopelessly in long queues at Delhi’s prestigious government hospitals, such as the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). The clinics, used by a million people in the first couple of years, provide a first line of treatment, which often eliminates the need for further treatment. The government schools were upgraded to match private schools in curricula and in creature comforts, and boasted brightly lit and colourfully painted classrooms. The teachers are actually striving to provide quality education in government schools and are available and answerable to parents to talk about the progress of children.

In 2019, the AAP launched its high-voltage election promise, announcing free power for consumers. The criterion for getting a waiver on the monthly bill was that the consumer used less than 200 units of power a month. Those who criticized this ‘freebie’ were reminded that these 200 units were nothing compared to a Member of Parliament (MP) getting 4,000 units of electricity free of charge.

That this election was won, despite the entire might of the BJP government holding rallies and doing door-to-door campaigning, coupled with the availability of enormous amounts of funds and hence, the ability to buy much media time and space, was amazing. Despite all this, David did beat Goliath, hands down, because people were actually weighing who was serving the best interests of the public and the answer was the AAP.

When Deepak discussed with me the co-authoring of a book on this victory, I was very excited, as this story had to be told and the backstories of the key team members shared. My association with Kejriwal goes back in time to 2005, when he worked in Delhi on the Right to Information (RTI) Act. I have always respected what he has stood for and what he had achieved through these years.

However, soon after we started mapping the contours of this book with the publisher, the COVID-19 situation began to get out of hand, and when by midnight of 24 March the first lockdown came into effect, we were still listing the chapters. So, this book is an achievement of several interviews done face to face before the lockdown and many online interviews, meetings, research and everything else. Of course, by the time we were writing the last chapter, several of the key persona who had to be interviewed, such as Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia, were personally totally involved in leading the battle against coronavirus in the capital, and their planned interviews had to be put on the back-burner several times, before we could finally talk to them about their vision for the future.

However, we feel that with this book, we bring you closer to several key players in the party who have shared their experiences and provide fresh insights on how the small, ‘new-kid-on-the-block’ party pulled the punches and how, after the opportunity of serving their constituents for a full five-year term, their experience brought political and administrative maturity.
We meet the management consultant and entrepreneur-turned-AAP political campaigner Kapil Bhardwaj, who is a 12th-generation Dilliwallah. He ensured that despite the 2019 loss, the party quickly geared up and was ready to take on the battle for AAP’s survival. The only way forward was to listen up: to listen to the volunteers, to the experts and political observers and, most importantly, to the voters. AAP’s very existence depended on the 2020 assembly elections.
So what were the lessons from the 2019 Lok Sabha polls? Was AAP’s message not getting through to the voters? These answers were vital for the AAP and for Jasmine Shah, who was to be the primary lead for the party’s media campaign in the 2020 Delhi elections; this programme was going to be an eye-opener and it was crucial to get the party’s messaging right. A three-pronged approach was followed, which was crucial if the AAP wanted to get back into the fighting ring.

One of the things which emerged was that ‘the expectations from the AAP are immense. We are a political disruptor. We keep saying that we are not here for the power and it’s our ideology for clean and effective governance which drives us, but at the same time, if we don’t win, then it will be said that it is our ideology that has failed,’ said Preeti Sharma Menon, spokesperson and National Executive member of the AAP.

Menon says, ‘Almost all the people who have joined our party have done so because they want to bring about a change in politics. There must be the romance of belief, but we needed to ensure both for our voters as well as for our volunteers, that we deliver on the promises we had made.’

Romance may have swayed the voters in 2015, but it was Satyendra Jain, architect-turned-politician and one of Kejriwal’s most trusted aides and versatile Cabinet ministers, who came up with what several believe to be the game changer for the AAP in the 2020 Delhi elections. Working closely with Kejriwal, he suggested the free electricity package, and worked closely with the team to ensure delivery of other benefits such as mohalla clinics, free bus travel for women and many other schemes that became important to the people of Delhi.

The AAP was outflanked and outspent by the BJP, which had deployed its line-up of central ministers, MPs and CMs from other states to campaign for Delhi 2020. In such a situation, Ankit Lal and his team successfully used social media to amplify the party’s message and also challenge the BJP. Lal has handled social media for all the elections since the inception of the AAP. Following the stunning victory of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh (UP), where a powerful WhatsApp network had played a key role, the AAP decided to learn from the winners.

The AAP effectively used social media to connect volunteers with office-bearers; it created Vidhan Sabha-wise WhatsApp groups of volunteers to quickly disseminate information and during the 2020 assembly elections, it successfully used these channels to counter propaganda pushed by its opponents.Before electioneering started, AAP’s WhatsApp warriors were ready under Lal.

Elections also need money and that’s where Pankaj Gupta and Neeraj Gulati, both highly successful entrepreneurs and troubleshooters for the AAP, came in as key fundraisers.
For the 2013 elections, Kejriwal made an emotional appeal to Delhiites that he needed `20 crore to fight the elections, as the party had no money. People were surprised and said that if a politician was asking for money, then the party could not be corrupt. By going out and seeking donations, the AAP seemed to be only reinforcing that image.

As donations started pouring in, the party website kept track of the donations and displayed the total payments received at any given point. The moment it crossed the benchmark of `20 crore, the website stopped accepting donations. Kejriwal went a step further. On the morning of 17 November 2013, he tweeted: ‘Our party needed `20 crores to fight elections. We have met the target. We don’t need any more money for Delhi elections.’

If the 2015 Delhi elections were unprecedented with the AAP winning 67 of the 70 seats in the capital, 2020 was remarkable given the fact that the BJP’s election machinery had put in all its might into the contest.

Professor Abhay Kumar Dubey, political commentator, feels that what cost the BJP a victory in the 2020 Delhi assembly elections was the use of two different models of development. The Modi model, used countrywide by the BJP in the lead-up to the 2019 national elections, targeted the poorest of the poor and the marginalized to deliver free gas, zero-balance bank accounts and health insurance coverage of up to `5 lakh, and so in the process, netted 10 crore additional voters. This model did not work in Delhi as the immigrant worker, though poor, earned just enough to be cut off from receiving these benefits. The AAP model, on the other hand, carefully studied the needs of the Delhi voter and, for five years, worked to give them the things they needed most: free electricity of up to 200 units, free water, free bus rides for women, good mohalla clinics and government schools which are now the envy of many private schools.

Sisodia, Deputy CM and the right-hand man of Kejriwal, talks about listening to the citizens of Delhi and understanding their needs and honestly addressing these. He says that it is the job of the government to instill a sense of confidence in the mind and heart of the common man of Delhi. If a child is born in the family, the parents don’t need to worry about providing the child with quality education and the child needn’t worry about providing affordable and quality healthcare for the ageing parents. The AAP has been working towards this and this is why the people voted for their party.

So, where does the AAP go from here? How does it plan on expanding? Aatishi Singh, an academic-turned-politician and one of the main strategists for the party, shares her candid thoughts on the way forward for the AAP. Singh articulates her vision for the country and for AAP’s important role in the future of the country. ‘Some fights are not fought only when you are assured of the victory. They are fought because that’s the right thing to do. And that’s what we did. And we will do it over and over again.’

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Capital Contest tells us the story of how the political disruptor managed to disrupt once again and win the capital contest. It also gives deep insights into how the AAP has grown as a political entity. Weaving in candid accounts from the party’s key decision-makers and strategists, this book is an essential read not only for those who keenly track politics and sociology, but also for all those who are interested in understanding how India has changed and continues to change and how its politicians must continuously monitor the pulse of the people so as to be in sync with a fast-changing nation.

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