How quickly things have turned on their head. Six months ago, nobody (barring the party itself) thought that the fledgling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) would be more than a footnote in the Delhi assembly elections. And the day after it exited after 49 days of a rollercoaster run at the helm in Delhi, the speculation has shifted to what they are likely to achieve in the 16th general election slated to get underway in April-May.

The explanation underlying the early exit of the AAP in Delhi probably lies buried in these extreme reactions. It was indeed the big idea of the just-concluded assembly election. But I believe Arvind Kejriwal, an astute political mind, was seeing a diminishing trade-off in continuing to be chief minister and in seeking a larger role nationally for the start-up. It is now looking to evolve from being just a disruptor to a usurper—a process it is seeking to fast-track given the opportunity provided in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls.

For this, Citizen Kejriwal had to re-emerge, especially after his image has got such an incredible lift as an activist chief minister among his core voter base. Indeed it is a gamble, albeit a calculated one at that; the party risks losing even what it has at the moment, because the dynamics of the Lok Sabha are entirely different from that in an assembly poll. Presumably, both Kejriwal and the AAP will be inspired by the fact that they had taken a similar plunge against even greater odds when they abandoned Anna Hazare and embarked as a political party—meeting with profound success.

We will never be able to confirm or deny it, but it is very likely that the AAP, though it claimed otherwise, never really expected to do as spectacularly as it did. The shock and awe of its performance catalysed events around it and very soon the AAP found itself taking oath as a minority government. If it had formed a government in any of the other 28 states in the country, it may have been a different story altogether. But given the unique status of Delhi, having never really shed its apron-strings association with the Union government that dates back to its status as a Union territory, the AAP was hamstrung; the fact that it was a minority regime and at the mercy of the very party, the Congress, it had reviled and then decimated in the election only complicated things further.

So the exit was waiting to happen. And the AAP found it in the knotty issue involving the Jan Lokpal Bill—the anti-graft legislation it had authored and wanted Delhi to adopt. In the process it has sought to retain the central ideology—the fight against graft—that powered its success.

The big question is—now what?

Public opinion, especially in the media, a section of which has turned hostile to the AAP, is divided. But that is to be expected from those who view the party with the prism of the middle class: what doesn’t look like us or behave like us has to be feared.

And in this, Kejriwal’s brand of politics is unorthodox. Something akin to the Sri Lankan leg-spinner Ajantha Mendis—till batsmen figured him out, Mendis was virtually unplayable and often described as the mystery spinner because of the so-called carrom ball. So when the chief minister goes on dharna and then sleeps on the footpath in 4 degrees Celsius, Kejriwal comes across as weird to most of us, but as a hero to his base. As a colleague reported in a piece from Seelampur in eastern Delhi, the sense of ownership of the short-lived government by the economical disenfranchised is too stunning to be believed. So when their chief minister walks away from power, they feel energized, just like the country rallied behind Atal Bihari Vajpayee when he stepped down after 13 days—only to be re-elected.

Leave alone figure, political parties are in denial of the AAP. They think it is a bad dream that will simply go away. Meanwhile, the media attention, even though negative, simply refuses to fade. The end result: Kejriwal is in our mind space, just like Narendra Modi, the prime ministerial candidate of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) . It is simply fascinating to watch Kejriwal deal with floundering anchors, handicapped by their poor understanding of this political movement that has scant regard for convention.

Nobody can predict the future. But for now, by exiting government after a very voluble campaign against graft, Kejriwal is on the verge of appropriating the anti-corruption agenda. Given the similarity of their support base with the Congress, the primary casualty will be the country’s oldest political party. Especially the vocal reference to crony capitalism—something that has come to be associated with the incumbent government thanks to the raft of allegations of misuse of public money—by the outgoing government.

It will be interesting to see how the AAP stacks up against Modi, who is selling his agenda of good governance (read: graft-free) together with the promise of meeting the aspirations of the youth—most of whom are jobless. As the election draws closer, Modi is skilfully redrafting his script and tilting the balance to a more positive agenda and reducing the rhetoric.

Regardless of how the AAP does in the forthcoming Lok Sabha election, it is evident, especially given their ability to outwit both the BJP and the Congress repeatedly, that this is a political formation for the long haul. Like they say, change is always good.

Anil Padmanabhan is deputy managing editor of Mint and writes every week on the intersection of politics and economics. Comments are welcome at capitalcalculus@livemint.com

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