What is responsible for India’s political deshabille?

What is responsible for India’s current political deshabille? Look beyond the usual suspects such as corruption, mismanaged fiscal policies and a malfunctioning political apparatus (all of which have undoubtedly played their role) and you will spot the culprit — the common man. He is India’s problem as well the solution to the problem and every once in a while, these polarities combine to offer a syncretic breakthrough as it happened in the state assembly elections earlier this month. For an observer of the great Indian saga post-independence, it is easy to understand how the common man is at the core of this paradoxical engagement of problem and solution. But, to the great and enduring misfortune of India, its politicians have never been able to comprehend this simple play of the opposites.

The term ‘common man’ has been the most used and abused term in political discourses in India for decades. Irrespective of the cabal investing it with an import — the polity, media, strategists, political analysts, sociologists or any others — the fate of the common man is parenthesised between veneration and victimisation with patronisation and mockery jostling for space in between. The Congress party is a poster example of how patronising the common man can be like a knife-edged boomerang that returns with the intention of beheading the thrower.

The confessions of political misspellings by a crestfallen Sonia Gandhi and a morose Rahul in the wake of their deafening defeat in three of the five state assemblies earlier this month, with Delhi being virtually snatched out of their grasping hands, were pitiable in their timbre and tone. The Congress has been so removed from the reality of Indian aspirations, it is hard not to believe that the Gandhis, and by extension, the party, do not suffer from suicidal somnambulism. But these are kind words for them. Consider the cravenness of the Congress: After having ridiculed Kejriwal all along, Sonia and Rahul, speaking though a thick fog of defeat on December 8 promised to do their homework and in the next move, the Congress, in a masterstroke aimed at thwarting the BJP’s attempt at forming the government in Delhi, extended its unconditional support to the AAP on the grounds that governance is above all political considerations. Such abominable grandstanding is befitting of a party that has worked itself into an anachronism and at the core of this self-destruction lies its inability to understand the common man, an incomprehension that plagues all political parties in India in varying degrees.

Dynastic arrogance

India’s common man is a breed apart. Even though the commonality of his problems — food, shelter, employment, empowerment, equal opportunities — fuse his ilk into a monolithic entity, he does not fit a prototype. Every few hundred kilometres across the Indian landscape, you will meet him in different guises and each time, you need to adjust your understanding of him within the larger commonality.

There are as many constants that define India’s common man as there are variables that set him apart from himself. The ability or inability to do this, both, have their rewards. The former earns you his clear-headed loyalty and the latter, his resigned servitude. But not many politicians in India know the difference between the two and how each plays a role in altering their political fate, and that of the country. A fact which underlines the unprecedented success of Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).

Faced off against the dynastic arrogance of the Congress Party and its brazen neglect of the common man’s hopes and the BJP’s infiltrating brand of populism that names and shames its opponents’ weaknesses with more passion than it reserves for a discussion of its election agenda for 2014 — both approaches displaying poor empathy for the common man — Kejriwals’ political modus operandi has been a canny blend of self-deprecation and masterful empathy.

The success of this approach showed its ability to resonate with the public, which has been desperate to be discovered for its true self. Kejriwal made the people believe that he cared enough for them to undertake this voyage of discovery. His regular reminders to the country that he too belongs to the breed of the common man clearly worked their magic, a feat impossible for the jejune Rahul Gandhi to pull off, and to a certain extent also a national challenge for Modi, who though having risen from the ranks is now obsessed with being larger than life.

India has lived long enough with identity politics and is beginning to realise its defunct nature. For the next government at the centre in 2014 to make a success of itself, it needs to move away from identity indulgence to an identification of the issues that need to be dealt with.

The AAP’s success has been the classic dues ex machina, achieving a breakthrough in a political impasse India has been blind sided in for years. The long-term success of Kejriwal, and of his party, is not the important issue. What’s important is to learn from the today’s lesson the AAP has taught the Congress and the BJP. If India has to make progress, it must be with the participation of the common man.