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Showing posts from April, 2014

The AAP: An appraisal

The birth and the rise of the Aam Aadmi party has been a truly remarkable series of events in India’s recent history, events that had the potential to  rekindle a cynic’s faith in the beneficial - self regulating and self correcting - aspects of a democracy. It was a wave of popular discontent, hope and idealism facing a shameless, high-handed, thoroughly and brazenly corrupt Congress establishment drunk with power. The Congress, like a drunkard at the peak of an alcohol fueled delusion of power and invincibility was knocked out cold by a tight slap of public anger in the Delhi assembly elections. The assembly election results were a culmination of an anti graft movement led by Anna Hajare, Swami Ramdev, Arvind Kejriwal along with several other civil society luminaries. The qualitative and quantitive characteristics of the AAP victory were astonishing. Maybe better than the AAP leaders estimated, and perhaps wanted. The AAP was still more of a loose popular movement manned by v