AAP Ka Kya Hoga?

AS coincidences go, the day AAP was trying to work out a “stalled decision” on forming Delhi government, television was showing 1986 Hindi flick ‘Ek Ruka Hua Faisla (ERHF)’ – a Bollywood remake of 1957 Hollywood classic ‘12 Angry Men’.

The echo of similarity between AAP’s exercise and the movie’s title was not the end of the coincidence however. If one was about crowdsourcing democracy, the other was about crowdsourcing justice. Now I have not seen the Hollywood original and am told that the Bollywood copy was only a poor cousin. More significantly, India does not have a jury system so the idea itself is a little out of place. But this post is not about a movie review.

The sum and substance of ERHF was a caricature. Of what happens when a crowd or a mob is made the decider of destinies.

For those who have not seen the movie, ERHF is centred on a verdict that needs a unanimous approval of a jury. The court has found a young man guilty of his father’s murder and slapped a death sentence. The jury – a dozen men who are a hodgepodge of varying degrees of temperaments, motivations, prejudices, and flippancy – has to iron out their differences and make a choice which would mean life and death for the convict.

The film is a commentary on consensus building by a group and proves the adage ‘too-many-cooks-spoil-the-broth’ rather apt. Most of the jury conclusions are based on assumptions and speculation, not facts. The proceedings amount to a mis-trial looked at from a legal eye.

Now I come to my point.

Arvind Kejriwal swore on his children that he would not take or give support to Congress or BJP. Now following a crowdsourced decision he is set to be Delhi Chief Minister. Kejriwal and his party have made a decision – or rather cooked one – for which they would pay through their nose as soon as the summer of 2014.

Like the jury in ERHF, AAP’s decision might be based on assumptions and speculation that do not go well with hard politics. For one, Congress has bared its fangs even before the oath taking. So for all practical purposes, Kejriwal can forget about any honeymoon period. Two, post results analysis, pollsters are clearly of the opinion that much of AAP’s vote was a snatch from an ill-prepared BJP’s kitty. Come 2014 and a Modi BJP would not be the same entity as a Harshvardhan BJP. Three, Delhi saw over two years of AAP activism, including its IAC avatar, prior to elections, which is not the case in rest of the country. Four, after Delhi government, effectively there are no personalities left to fan out across the country to work the AAP magic.

Am still not writing AAP’s epitaph. But the party might already have seen its best.