What the verdict means for Arvind Kejriwal
In 2014, Arvind Kejriwal suddenly became the third most important politician in India after Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi.
He had what they did not —a professional background, credibility as a civil society activist, zero political baggage that allowed him to cast himself as an anti-system crusader, a team of politically idealistic colleagues from diverse disciplines, a pool of volunteers swayed by the promise of a different kind of politics, and a people’s movement propelling him. Kejriwal made mistakes but recovered, won two sweeping mandates in Delhi, and transformed from being a crusader to offering a sample of credible governance in education and health, two domains that remain crucially under neglected.
Eleven years later, the Delhi verdict has left Kejriwal in a dramatically different political reality. His original colleagues have long deserted him. The party of idealists is as much as a party of power brokers and operators and ambitious opportunists as any other that marks the political landscape. He has baggage, of alleged corruption and of being seen as perennially confrontational and of being as autocratic as the rest in internal functioning. And most importantly, he doesn’t have any ideological or political framework that he can call his own. Service delivery isn’t politics. By aligning with the larger BJP’s ideological project, he left the secular space and was seen as a mere B team, yet he failed to retain the BJP’s voter base that twice picked him in local elections. And by losing out on the governance sheen, admittedly due to the Centre’s active undermining of his government, he was unable to show he was different from the rest.
And that is where this verdict has left Kejriwal. His party controls Punjab, a powerful state for sure but one facing an acute economic and social crisis and where AAP’s stock is declining, not rising. No other geography seems like hospitable territory for AAP in quick time. Recovering in Delhi will take time. Desertions from the party’s ranks, including in Parliament, may grow. And the legal challenges will persist. Kejriwal is an enterprising politician and his ability to be an opposition figure or make a comeback shouldn’t be doubted — but it will require a complete reinvention, a new message, and time.