NT Rama Rao's TDP proves why Sheila should fear AAP in Delhi

Elections in five state Assemblies – Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, and Rajasthan – have been touted variously as a dress rehearsal and a semi-final for the Lok Sabha elections due in some 200 days. Such catch-phrases are appropriate, as the outcomes will reflect the mood of the nation especially when it so closely precedes the major event.A win or loss in the two Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states, underpinned by Narendra Modi’s campaign, or even a marginal improvement or decline in the number of seats now held, would help assess the validity of his choice as a chief campaigner and a prospective prime minister.In themselves, the results are important to the respective states. The anti-incumbency factor, or what Modi himself calls ‘pro-incumbency’ in BJP states, will be put to the test. Like him (in Gujarat), MP and Chattisgarh will ride the incumbency wave, he has asserted. By the same yard stick, Congress can be pardoned for assuming victories in Rajasthan and Delhi.[caption id="attachment_1238053" align="alignleft" width="380"] Kejriwal may just sweep Sheila out of power: AFP[/caption]But Delhi holds a different promise altogether. It will test if Sheila Dikshit's good work – that is how it is seen bar corruption charges – too will ride the crest on counting day. More importantly, the focus has to be, and has been, the role of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). The AAP has the potential to set a trend that could change politics forever in the country. For this, it needn’t win the elections.All that AAP needs to do is to manage wins in a sufficient number of constituencies to stymie government formation by either of its two nervous rivals, the Congress and the BJP. Neither is likely to align with the other, nor will – going by AAP’s frequent assertions – AAP support either. In that case, the electors would have to go to the ballot machines all over again. That is where it risks being seen as a spoiler and sent out of reckoning.A more optimistic view, given the mood in the country, is that such a stalemate would signal the need for the major political parties who have been cynically exploiting voters to run their politics-based family enterprises to reinvent themselves. Many a candidate would be lobbed to the back room and a new order could well emerge. Persons with better appreciation of the common man’s aspirations may make it to the ballot papers.That would be the case not just in Delhi’s national capital region but in the whole of the subsequent Lok Sabha elections. The political parties so entrenched in their ways, including of taking the compliant voters for granted, to be invoked only at election time, would be forced to shed their baggage. The country would find a new spurring in the AAP and those who stayed out of governance could well lead it.The miracle that people hope for could well be delivered thanks mainly to the stubborn AAP which is fighting all the odds raised by the traditional parties using their conventional methods. Such hopes are not misplaced at all for there have been occasions where many an applecart have been upturned. Two examples come to mind. One was Telugu Desam in 1983 and the Assom Gana Parishad in 1985.NT Rama Rao’s announcement of setting up the TDP was initially seen with scepticism, even one of those gimmicks to which cine stars are prone to. The day he started his campaign and needed to make unscheduled stops, it was dismissed as the draw of a cinematic hero and discounted. Reality began to sink in slowly and then a wave was discerned. He twice won 202 of the 294 seats and also took the biggest contingent of 33 MPs to Lok Sabha.Two years later, when Assam saw AGP win the elections, it turned out that each and every minister to adorn a seat in the secretariat was a first-time legislator. Some of them were only students who migrated there straight from the university hostels. The unifier of various strands that made up the AGP was, however, nullified by corruption. The ideology of language as a basic strand pushed it through to the second term.AAP may similarly benefit. The angst against corruption and nepotism, adding up to misgovernance, is manifestly strong enough for AAP to overthrow Congress in Delhi. The Telugu pride on which NT Rama Rao rode his chariot to victory in Andhra Pradesh was an iota less palpable compared to the citizens’ ire at bad governance and non-delivery of entitlements, leave alone promises.In elections, undercurrents count. Here a surge of anti-establishment sentiment is visible. The determinant is the scale of voting, especially by the undecided. In 1983 even before the political parties could send vehicles to bring out the voters, they had lined up at the booths across Andhra Pradesh. The results were spectacular. NT Rama Rao in fact led the loosely held opposition formation at the centre.If students could catapult themselves into the government in Assam, and a cinema star could diminish Congress to the extent that sacking him under some pretext was not countenanced, crowds thronging the Raj Bhavan, there is no reason why a rickshaw-driver, or a former Income Tax official or an erstwhile news anchor cannot make it in Delhi. But conditions apply: the voter has to do his job.