Revenge of the Aam Aadmi

Nine months ago as the BJP’s victory procession took stock of the spoils of war, army commander Narendra Modi and his chief Amit Shah were certain that the ashes of Arvind Kejriwal’s political ambitions had been immersed, in the Ganga, along the ghats of Varanasi, during the evening aarti on May 16, 2014. The AAP’s national aspirations had been torn asunder by voters. 96 per cent of the 432 AAP candidates in the Lok Sabha polls had lost their deposits. Kejriwal’s credibility was in tatters and the AAP’s future looked bleak.

From being drubbed 0-7, at the General Elections, in May last year to sweeping Delhi in the Assembly elections in February 2015, the Aam Aadmi Party has literally risen like a phoenix from the ashes that the BJP thought had been sunk in the Ganga. The post-poll survey done by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) provides deep insights into what helped Kejriwal vanquish the most formidable political machine in India’s recent electoral history.

Economic class emerges as most potent vote bank

The BJP had thrown its entire army against Kejriwal. But the "MufflerMan" had on his side an idea whose time was nigh. And as Victor Hugo had said, "No army can stop an idea whose time has come". Delhi 2015 was the first election which saw the emergence of an urban economic class as the biggest vote bank. The capital’s unbridled growth had created a vast constituency of voters who were bound together not by caste or religion but by their precarious perch at the margins of society.

According to the CSDS data, a whopping 65 per cent of the underclass or the urban poor voted for the Aam Aadmi Party. The gap between the AAP and the BJP’s popularity among the underprivileged of Delhi was a whopping 43 per cent, with the BJP getting just 22 per cent of the poor people’s vote. This massive gap was the single biggest reason Modi’s hitherto unchallenged Ashvamedha rath came to a grinding halt in the battlefield of Delhi.

No longer an urban phenomenon

In the December 2013 Assembly elections, the Aam Aadmi Party had been routed in outer Delhi, which is also the more rural part of the capital. But over the past eight months, Kejriwal worked hard on building up a party structure, on the ground, for the 16 seats of outer Delhi. Setting aside the rhetoric of political idealism, five candidates were poached from parties like the BSP, the BJP and the Congress to bolster the AAP on seats where the party was weak. Kejriwal also highlighted the changes in the land acquisition law that the Modi government was trying to push through the ordinance route. The fear of losing their precious land saw residents of outer Delhi rally around the "jhadoo". From a position of weakness, the AAP was able to shore up its fortunes and bagged half the votes in rural Delhi, while the BJP was left far behind at 36 per cent.

Everyone loves freebies

While PM Modi took the politically tougher but more viable route of preaching economic prudence, Kejriwal rolled out a red carpet full of freebies for the aam aadmi. And Dilliwalas clearly seemed to like things they didn’t have to pay for. Of all the promises made during the campaign by the BJP, the Congress and the AAP, the one that received the highest support was the promise of cheap electricity and water, held out by Kejriwal. 28 per cent of the respondents in the CSDS survey thought that this was the best election promise. Reducing corruption, fighting price rise or improving women’s safety did not generate the same level of traction as the promise of free bijli-paani.

Congress left empty-handed

The BJP managed to hold on to its core support base in the Delhi elections, with its vote share falling only one per cent since the last polls. With 33 per cent vote share the BJP had bagged 31 seats in 2013 but with 32 per cent vote share the party’s tally crashed to three seats in 2015. The reason behind the wild swing in the BJP’s fortunes is the virtual decimation of the Congress party in Delhi. The Congress won three assembly elections in the capital by building a strong vote bank among the slum dwellers, Dalits and Muslims of Delhi. In this election, these voters migrated en masse to the AAP. 65 per cent of the slum dwellers, 74 per cent of the Jatav-Dalits and a staggering 78 per cent of the Muslims said that they had voted for the AAP. These figures are higher than the support enjoyed by the Congress amongst these communities at the peak of its popularity in Delhi. Despite having the Akali Dal on its side, the BJP lost to the AAP even among the Sikhs of Delhi. The AAP got 56 per cent of the Sikh vote, while the BJP-Akali alliance managed only 35 per cent. The Congress was whittled down to eight per cent.

Modi loves the youth connect

Candidate Modi had been able to leverage the aspirations of the young voters of the capital in May 2014. But in only nine months, his party seems to have fallen out of favour with the youth. 56 per cent of the voters between the age group of 18-25 said they had voted for the AAP, while only 31 per cent voted for the BJP. The BJP’s much vaunted social media army came a cropper against the motley volunteer force of the Aam Aadmi Party. Through its flash mobs, door to door campaign and street processions, the AAP was able to capture the imagination of the city’s youth while the BJP floundered at every step.

Kejriwal's common man touch

Perceptions can be fatal in politics. The Delhi election came to be perceived as a battle between the fancy, monogrammed suit-wearing Modi’s BJP versus the ordinary, muffler-wearing Kejriwal’s AAP. Modi’s suit may or may not have cost ten lakh rupees but his globetrotting image and hobnobbing with rich industrialists seem to have cost his party its connect with the common man. A large part of the AAP’s voters saw Kejriwal as honest and someone who cared about the common man’s concerns. While Kiran Bedi was seen as honest and someone who could deliver on women’s safety she did not seem to have been able to establish a connect with the all important common man.

The "acche din" itch

The BJP sank in 2004 because Pramod Mahajan convinced Vajpayee that India was shining. In 2015 voters are wondering where is the "achhe din" promised by Modi. While the upper middle class and rich seemed to be more willing to wait, a massive 60 per cent of the poor respondents categorically felt that Modi had failed to usher in "acche din". Politics hath no fury like a poor man scorned. Despite the BJP's promise of having been able to control price rise over the past eight months, 72 per cent of the poor people felt that the cost of essential items had actually gone up in this period. Even amongst the middle class 52 per cent felt that prices of food items had gone up under Modi.

Kiran Bedi boomerangs

Super cop Bedi was brought in with much fan fare, by the BJP and touted as a game changer in the Delhi polls. But 63 per cent of the voters did not seem to approve of her last minute parachuting into the Delhi poll pitch. Even among traditional BJP supporters, 60 per cent felt that the party’s decision to bring in Bedi had ignored the legitimate claims of other state leaders. With a 67-3 margin, Kejriwal has done to the BJP, what Modi did to the Congress in May 2014 - left the party with nowhere to hide. Kiran Bedi alone cannot be made to carry the coffin. If Narenda Modi thinks that the verdict in Delhi was so adverse only because of local factors then he would be making a big mistake. However, if Kejriwal starts thinking that the Delhi verdict reflects a larger national yearning for the AAP, he too would be making another fatal mistake.

Modi had mocked poll pundits in May last year for failing to gauge the extent of the "Modi wave". "It’s not arithmetic, it’s chemistry," he said. Looking at the 67-3 score line in Delhi, it’s clear, Modi was right. A victory of this magnitude cannot be described through poll arithmetic. Kejriwal built a chemistry with the voters of the capital, which caused all known election arithmetic to fail.