WITH probably just over two months to go before India’s general election, nothing stands still for long. The big political news in December was the stunning state-election debut of a Delhi-based anti-corruption party, formed only in 2012. The Common Man, or Aam Aadmi, Party led by Arvind Kejriwal came from nowhere to sweep up 28 of the 70 assembly seats in local elections in Delhi. It helped to flatten Congress, which had ruled Delhi for 15 years, and took the shine off other state-election victories by Narendra Modi and the main national opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Since no party won an outright majority in Delhi, none appeared eager to form a government. In the end, Mr Kejriwal agreed to take office with the outside support of Congress legislators. But he did so intending to use it as a platform for more effective national campaigning. On February 14th, just 49 days after he became chief minister, he quit. Perhaps surprisingly, this is widely considered to be evidence of success, not failure.

Mr Kejriwal is a former civil servant who dresses modestly, speaks softly and takes immense care to promote himself as a humble figure. It takes some skill for a politician to project himself so convincingly as an anti-politician, and in this AAP’s leader is gifted. The BJP’s Mr Modi, still the pre-eminent figure of the coming election scrap, has great strengths: he looks forceful, ambitious and has some clear ideas of what he would do in office (his handicap is his failure to address riots in Gujarat that killed over 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, under his watch, in 2002). As a chief minister from Gujarat, he can try, too, to present himself as somewhat distant from corrupt Delhi politics. These are resented by many Indians in the same way that Americans despair of the rottenness within the Beltway. But Mr Kejriwal is the more convincing outsider.

Stunts pulled in his brief time as chief minister have helped to broaden his reputation as a battler for the little guy: he spent a chilly night sleeping on a pavement to protest against poor policing and his demand that the local government in Delhi assume more powers now held at the federal level; last week he began a legal process saying India’s largest private energy company fixed high gas prices in connivance with politicians; and he stormed out of office to protest against the refusal by BJP and Congress to support his plan for an anti-graft institution. For the record, Rahul Gandhi, Congress’s leader and scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty also tries, but fails hopelessly, in his bid to be seen as an outsider.

Not everything has gone Mr Kejriwal’s way, but much has. His surge of success in December came largely thanks to support of Delhi’s poorer middle classes, mobilised by a small army of volunteers and funded by wealthier middle-class types and Indian donors abroad. Soon after taking office, AAP saw an explosion in members and donations, amid much excitement that the party could have significant national appeal (at least among urban voters). But wealthier types and donors based abroad lost their first passion for AAP, and once-supportive newspaper and television coverage turned more critical. The reasons: AAP’s populist economic policies, dishing out free electricity and water plus banning foreign investment in Delhi supermarkets, suggest it would do nothing to get economic growth up to speed again; the ex-chief minister’s street protests jammed the capital’s roads too often; perhaps worst of all, Mr Kejriwal’s law minister led a nasty raid on the Delhi homes of Ugandan immigrants who were accused of being prostitutes. Nor did Mr Kejriwal speak up over issues such as a Supreme Court decision in December to recriminalise homosexuality, or over the withdrawal of a controversial book about Hinduism last week. There seems to be nothing that is liberal about the AAP.

Still, Indian liberals have little electoral clout. If polls are to be believed, that nasty anti-African raid has made the AAP more popular, not less, among poorer residents of Delhi. One analysis of anger over jammed Delhi streets was that car-drivers grew angry with the AAP for the inconvenience, but poorer and more numerous bus-passengers and pedestrians cheered him all the more. Naturally, too, hand-outs of water and electricity bought some support. As for media coverage, Mr Kejriwal’s team, not entirely without cause, suggests that corporate interests are against him.

What does all this bode for the national election? As elsewhere, Indian politics is frequently reduced by analysts (and also voters) to personalities, notably of rival party leaders. Thus Mr Modi is, for now, a more powerful actor than the BJP. Similarly Mr Kejriwal, with a natural talent at giving interviews and connecting with ordinary voters, could lift his party to make an impact beyond Delhi. On February 16th it announced its first 20 candidates for the parliamentary polls, for urban spots such as Gurgaon, Mumbai and Ludhiana. As for Congress, it has profound weaknesses: a reputation for having presided over corruption and slowing economic growth, and the silence of its prime minister, Manmohan Singh. But perhaps most important is the under-performance of Mr Gandhi.

Yet it is worth remembering that India does not have a presidential system, but a Westminster one, whereby constituency candidates, regional and local politics, the strength of party organisation, money, as well as skill in coalition building, all count for at least as much as prominent leaders. For now it seems likely that the AAP could pick up some of Delhi’s seven parliamentary seats, plus a handful more in other parts of urban, mostly north India. If it could haul in 20 seats nationally, that would count as a tremendous success, and could make the AAP a potential part of a future national coalition. Its impact on the BJP or Congress, however, could be bigger than that. The risk for the BJP is that urban voters who otherwise would have plumped for Mr Modi would now go for Mr Kejriwal. The risk for Congress, already on the way to recording its worst ever defeat in a national election, is that voters who are sick of the incumbent, but unwilling to plump for Mr Modi, can now switch to the AAP. Mr Kejriwal is battling to become a political actor who is relevant nationally. He is likely to succeed in that.

(Picture credit: AFP)