Support of Aam Aadmi is not Unconditional to Aam Aadmi Party
Date :- 14th December 2013
Lot of interesting things happening in Indian Political arena. Something which has caught imagination of all of us, is recent success of "Aam Aadmi Party(AAP)" in Delhi Vidhan Sabha Election. I too Proudly donated to AAP, and volunteered for them from Pune in citizen call campaign. I am writing this post to describe what AAP means to me, why do I support it, and what are my basic expectations from AAP. Lets first start with Basic ideology of AAP which won my support :-
Core Ideology of AAP
I found following very intriguing and AAP got my support instantly :-
- Transparent Funding - Disclosing name of donors instantly AND not accepting undisclosed donations from corporate.
- Transparent & Impressive Candidate selection process- Just look at the list of 69 candidates they fielded in Delhi Vidhan Sabha. We all know, how costly it is to get tickets of Congress/BJP for Aam Aadmi to fight election in India. How they run candidate selection process as covert operation. Most impressively they managed to keep criminals away from legislating (we have 30% MPs in Loksabha who has power to legislates but with serious criminal cases against them.) This is HUGE win. They walked the talk. One candidate found to have got a case registered against him, they withdrew him instantly.
- They promises strong LokPal & Swaraj way of governance - I believe in their promise. I believe that they will make it happen, once come to power. By creating manifestos for each constituency by involving citizens directly, they have demonstrated that they can run "swaraj" style of governance.
Why do I support AAP
I support AAP because of above core ideology they have demonstrated that they follow it successfully. Also because no other political party shows any such values. I strongly believe their spokesperson have to work harder, to make above points, center focus of their success, and force other political party to follow same, in some way. After all as AAP claim, they are in Politics to change it.
- Condition 1 - If AAP deter anywhere else from above mentioned core ideology, you lose Aam Aadmi support.
Leaders in AAP
I am more impressed with AAP leaders like Vinod Kr Binny, commondo Surendra, Prof. Anand Kumar, Prof Yogendra Yadav, Saurabh Bharadwaj, Col Devindra Sherawat, and many. In fact I liked them more than famous faces like Kumar Vishwas, Shazia Ilmi. These unknown faces (except Prof Yogendra Yadav, who is a well know face) should get more exposures, and their awesome work should be discussed more often in media.
Mistakes committed by AAP so far (IMHO)
- Some wrong "Bayanbaji", esp from someone as eminent as Prashant Bhushan ji. You may say, his statements were his personal opinion and not party's vision, whats wrong in that? The "wrong" with that is, all the focus of media and public get caught in his negative opinions, and we loose focus from above mentioned "Core Ideology of AAP", Spokesmen of AAP got busy in giving clarifications and a very wrong image goes out in public about AAP. Which is very costly now.
- Arvind also committed similar mistake by questioning Batla encounter, which was a sub-judiced matter.
- Instead of Arvind visiting Religious men "individually" he should put effort to bring all of them in single stage, and meet them all simultaneously.
AAP has to win, not because they need power, but to correct other political parties, and overhaul overall democratic system within India.
- Condition 2 - Correct above mistakes as soon as possible.
Also as mentioned in "Leaders in AAP" section, let Kumar Vishwas, and shazia Ilmi prove themselves "more", and then let them go to media with much more credibility. Yes, they are good orators and have very good command over language, but that should not be only factor in letting them become face of AAP on media & to public "too often".
Where should be Focus in Future
Unfortunately AAP is forced to fight Loksabha, way too soon in its lifetime. Obviously AAP did not get enough time to build the network. They should be focusing on:-
- Building-up the organization in all remote places of India. AAP can learn a lot from RSS on this. I do admire RSS for this (well another blog post on this, on some other time).
- Clearing their standpoint in international relations of India. Well why? Does standpoint of Congress & BJP are clear on this point? No! Just because people & Media question on this point to AAP and we should have final answer on this. We just can't afford to be as ambiguous as Congress/BJP are. Surely, vision on international relations would evolve, as India, corrects it's internal corrupt & weak political leadership, & strengthens the economy, which is most important to have better standing on world platform.
