Under Kejriwal, AAP has embraced every failing it accused other parties of: betrayal of voters, excessive ambition, high personal ego, etc. Its real problem is that its over-ambitious leader led them up the garden path and failed to deliver.

He came, he saw, he ran away. That’s the story of Arvind Kejriwal so far. They came, they saw, they conked out. This is story of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) so far, with defeat sending the party into paroxysms of self-doubt, infighting and masochism.

After the rout of the party in all states barring Punjab in the Lok Sabha elections, the flood of entrants to the party that began soon after its unexpectedly good showing in the Delhi assembly polls is now reversing.

V Balakrishnan, the former Infosys CFO who declared AAP to be the “most successful startup by an IIT-ian ever” is now mum. Capt GR Gopinath, whose own start-up Air Deccan lost its footing seven years ago, saw the writing on the wall after 16 May and quit the party. Founding member Shazia Ilmi has also exited. Anjali Damania quit and was then convinced to stay. Yogendra Yadav quit the party’s political committee a few weeks ago. Manish Sisodia, another founding member, is pointing fingers at Yadav for targeting Arvind Kejriwal.

To be sure, defeat always leads to blood-letting in any political party. So in this regard AAP is no different. The problem is we went wrong in presuming that AAP would be quite different from other political parties. It wasn’t really so.

While it would churlish to deny that AAP started – and continues to remain – a party with a clean image, its trajectory has followed that of any other Indian political party. Consider…

#1: In December, when the party looked like a winner, everybody wanted to join it. The Aaya Rams entered the picture. The fact that most of them were from middle-class or corporate backgrounds needn’t confuse us. Journalists, corporate honchos, retired do-gooders and failed NGOs saw AAP as the route to political power. Little wonder, that after the 16 May defeat, AAP is seeing an exodus. How is this script different from that any of the other political start-up in India? It was opportunism at work; The only difference being the class that saw opportunity in AAP.

#2: Every political party has used favourable winds to grab power. This is exactly what AAP under Arvind Kejriwal did. On the basis of one unexpected victory in Delhi and the media hype built around Kejriwal, the party concluded that the world was its to conquer. The Delhi media, afraid of what Narendra Modi may bring to their own fortunes, suddenly saw Kejriwal as the great white hope. They led him up the garden path, giving him the conviction that he was invincible. After all, he had defeated Sheila Dikshit. So why not Modi?

#3: Kejriwal’s political ego was no different from that of any other Indian politician. He pretended he was not after power. Fake humility and real hubris is the hallmark of every two-bit Indian politician – and Kejriwal was no different. Which politician, bar Modi, has openly declared his ambitions transparently in the run-up to power?

#4: Like every other party, Kejriwal was a one-man show. Despite all pretence at being democratic, the fact is Kejriwal was the only leader AAP projected – or, rather, he decided he was AAP and AAP was him. So whatever he did was never questioned. When he was called to a police station in Gujarat for violation of a poll code, AAP volunteers – normally very concerned about the rule of law - attacked the BJP office in Delhi. Kejriwal made a great show of seeking the Delhi voter’s permission before becoming CM, but he did no such research when deciding to take on Modi in Varanasi or when quitting as CM.

Democracy and referendums are apparently relevant only when Kejriwal can’t make up his mind. How was he different from other Indian politicians, who talk democracy only when it suits them, but forget about it at other times?

#5: Kejriwal took voters for granted. His party was elected in Delhi as the main opposition. He teamed up with a defeated party to rule. He quit when he thought there was a better opportunity in holding another election.

But he suddenly decided that he would fight a Lok Sabha election from Varanasi. Did he even consider how his Delhi voter would have felt? If they put him in power, and he decides he will do something else, was it not tantamount to cheating his voters? This is exactly what crooked politicians do. The fact that Kejriwal did not take bribes or become corrupt is immaterial to this argument. Honesty is not about not taking bribes – as Manmohan Singh’s tenure proved. It is about earning the voters’ trust and acting with integrity. Kejriwal showed no sense of loyalty to his own voters and betrayed their trust. AAP's problem is thus Kejriwal himself.

#6: He let down his own party. In the Lok Sabha elections, Kejriwal went to fight Modi in Varanasi. His party devoted its scarce resources to a lost cause, and the party leader left his other colleagues – Kumar Vishwas in Amethi, Shazia Ilmi in Ghaziabad – to fend for themselves. They all lost their deposits. When it came to the crunch, Kejriwal went after personal glory, and ignored his party. How is this bad behaviour any better than any other dubious Indian politician’s?

AAP needs to introspect, and the biggest area for introspection is the quality and capabilities of their leader – Arvind Kejriwal. Kejriwal has been self-obsessed and has sought personal glory at the cost of his party. The Punjab results show the truth of this statement: Kejriwal was invisible there, and the self-grown AAP candidates pulled off a miracle by focusing on real issues. The people of Punjab saw that the AAP candidates spoke for them, and were not opportunists. The fact that AAP fared best where Kejriwal was not a factor should tell us about the remedy for AAP’s problems. It has to tell Kejriwal to pipe down and not promote himself all the time.

The real point is that AAP is an idea – of idealistic and selfless leaders fighting for real causes and genuine concerns. Kejriwal betrayed that idea by focusing on media projection and his own ambitions.

When Kejriwal appeared to be faltering in Delhi, former BJP ideologue KN Govindacharya had this to say in an interview to The Economic Times: “The future is built on the lessons of the past. Even if it fails, it will facilitate others. I fear that Kejriwal may become the Abhimanyu of Mahabharata, where he learns how to enter the chakravyuh and doesn't know how to exit. In the Mahabharata, the gurus broke the rules to attack him, and Arvind (Kejriwal) too might face such unethical attacks, from thaili shahs (bag men), to naukar shahs (bureaucrats) to rival parties. But the fact is that in terms of a political continuum, the process will be on, many experiments like this are in the pipeline.”

Govindacharya was right to assume that AAP’s current troubles do not mean the end of experiments to foster change, but he was dead wrong on Kejriwal. It was not his rivals who did him in by unfair means, he committed hara kiri. He fell victim to his own over-ambition and political chicanery. Does AAP have a future? Yes. But only if it can put a leash on Kejriwal.