Delhi votes today but has it really changed?

Delhi will vote the day you read this column. And, the only thing Delhi voters should remember while pressing the button on the electronic voting machine (EVM) is whether Delhi has seen any improvement of note, such as the creation of infrastructure, in the past 15 years of the joint stewardship of Arvind Kejriwal and Narendra Modi.

Delhi is the national capital of the world’s fourth-largest and growing economy, and does the state of the city reflect this status?

Shouldn’t the entire political establishment take pride in creating a Delhi that is a worthy face of India to the world?

Delhi is my home, my city, where I have gone to school and college, worked as a journalist, and put down roots by buying a home. Except for a brief stint in London, Delhi is all I have known, and I love the city as passionately as my favourite poet and distinguished Delhi denizen, Ghalib.

That’s why the state of my home — the terrible roads, the toxic air, the systematic corruption organising huge encroachment on Delhi’s only green lung, the Delhi Ridge, the lack of any public commons, the fact that if you are reckless enough to drink the tap water you will go straight to A&E in hospital, the erratic power supply, the truly awful law and order which ensures that no woman, from an infant to a septuagenarian, is safe — angers me.

Despite this record, both the BJP and the AAP are spending eye-watering sums of money in their campaign to win the Delhi elections.

The mighty voter has the capacity to reduce the pretensions of every political analyst to dust, so it would be a foolhardy analyst who would stick their neck out and predict the outcome of the Delhi elections, which will have enormous national implications. As my beloved readers of SWAT Analysis will recall, I did stick my neck out and tell you the correct results for both the Maharashtra and Haryana elections.

So here are some takeaways from the Delhi campaign. Delhi last saw development under the leadership of the late Sheila Dikshit as Chief Minister. She made quite a transformation of the civic infrastructure during the Commonwealth Games, yet the Congress Party is barely fighting the elections.

Political history is witness to the fact that if the Congress Party is voted out thrice in a state, it virtually becomes extinct and is unable to make a comeback. This is why the lack of a Congress fight is inexcusable for a political party that only exists to win elections and get into power.

The preoccupations of the Gandhi family — the top leadership of the party — remain a mystery to the mere mortals of the public and the lesser leaders of the party.

Kejriwal has lost much of his sheen and is fighting the battle of his life, having lost much of his trademark image and brand of being “kattar imandar” (fiercely honest). He’s made the political journey from the pretend Aam Aadmi (common man) to the air-conditioned Aadmi, and the hawk-eyed Delhi voter has seen through him and his political pretensions.

Though currently, how relevant this is remains a matter of debate, as both the AAP and the BJP are fighting the election on the battleground of freebies. The contest is currently centred on who has more goodies on offer, and Modi and Kejriwal are battling to outdo one another.

So while Kejriwal’s brand has been diluted to the extent that he is facing trouble in his own constituency, the goodies on offer keep AAP in the contest. Yet if the BJP, which is putting up a ferocious fight, wins, it will upset Kejriwal’s entire politics and upend his so-far hugely successful political career. Kejriwal, who functions as a mini-dictator in AAP, having thrown out all rivals, will find his own position weakened and the prospect of a long stint in jail on charges of alleged corruption looming over him.

The BJP, sensing a weakness in Kejriwal, is going all out to defeat the political upstart. For Modi, Delhi is a matter of prestige, and they are staking everything after having tasted defeat.

The Union budget, with its tax cuts, was also a sop to the Delhi electorate and its middle-class component, since this is the first time that the Modi government has moved to change the tax rates since it was voted into power in 2014. Modi is leading the campaign aggressively from the front, calling AAP “Aapda” (epidemic), and, for once, striking a chord with the voters.

The BJP is also happy about the disunity the Delhi elections have created in the opposition, with the INDIA alliance split wide open — the Congress taking on AAP, thereby splitting the opposition vote, while the Trinamool Congress and the Samajwadi Party support the AAP.