13 - Political Parties: The Emergence of the Aam Aadmi Party and the Changing Contours of the Party System

Summary

In the 2015 election for the Delhi Legislative Assembly, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) stunningly won 67 of the 70 seats. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the remaining three seats. The Indian National Congress (INC), which had held power for 15 continuous years from 1998 to 2013 under Chief Minister Sheila Dixit, did not win a single seat. The emergence of the AAP as a disruptor in stable two-party system, and its critique of political class and marginalization of citizen voices in the political sphere, has to be located in the wider changes which have come about in India's social and political landscape in general and Delhi in particular. In Delhi, the AAP dislodged the incumbent Congress party from power and relegated it to political margins in the city-state. However, at the federal level, it has failed to project itself as a viable political alternative.

The significance of the AAP lay in the fact that it brought the agenda of social and political transformation, akin to social democratic experiments in the Scandinavian countries, to the political center stage, albeit fleetingly, as the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement transformed itself into a political party. The formation of the AAP and its early success in galvanizing support across class categories was believed to be a resolution of the dilemma often faced by civil society movements. Previous movements led by civil society had failed to resolve class differences due to their inability to build a network cutting across class divides. As an offshoot of the hugely popular IAC movement, the AAP succeeded in providing a common platform to disparate sections of the urban poor and middle class and managed to stitch a broad-based social coalition cutting across social and economic categories. Patrick Heller characterizes the IAC movement as belonging to the category of counterpower movements, with an express agenda of challenging the status quo by mobilizing civil society as a “counterpower.” He argues that their most significant contribution has been to bring the issue of participatory governance, accountability, and transparency to the political limelight.