Mustafabad message to Kejriwal: If work your identity, better deliver

The two Muslim women corporators in Mustafabad and Brijpuri — influenced by their politician husbands and the vice president of the Congress who had led the campaign — had decided to jump ship, thinking they would not be able to get anything done for their wards by remaining in a decimated Congress.

But soon, people were out on the streets burning their effigies — instigated, according to them, by their opponents, including the AIMIM who wanted to defame them. But their unhappy supporters also made it clear that they had voted for them because they were angry with their AAP MLA who had virtually abandoned them. Under pressure from all sides, the apologetic corporators quickly returned to the Congress fold.

Little Mustafabad turned out to be more fascinating than I had anticipated, highlighting trends that may contain national pointers. The story was more about AAP than about the Congress, with a warning to the newbie party. More than one Muslim resident had this to say, “If AAP doesn’t deliver in our area now, we will look at the BJP next time. We will deal directly with the company, why should we go through the agent?”

Mustafabad reflected the churning among many Muslims today; they are no longer looking at just defeating the BJP. “That’s important but more than that we want our kaam done.” Undoubtedly, many Muslims were affected by emotional issues, unhappy with Kejriwal for calling for police action against the Tablighi Jamaat in Nizamuddin in 2020 for being a super-spreader of Covid-19 – an allegation based more on prejudice than science.

Significantly, almost everyone I spoke to said they understand Kejriwal’s silence on controversial issues like CAA-NRC, knowing that his utterances will be used by the BJP to portray him as anti-Hindu. They have no problem with his espousal of Hanuman, Laxmi or Ganesh. But they are pained that that as CM, he did not visit the riot torn area even once — a visit that “would have halted the rioting”. But, “ultimately” what matters to them — and they say they would have overlooked all else — was “kaam” and this was not done in the area by the “useless” incumbent AAP MLA.

What agitated the Muslims the most, and this is the significant part of the story, pointing to the aspirational revolution taking place in India, was the absence of a school in their area. Girls had to walk 2 km to go to a school alone, crossing a narrow bridge.

Kejriwal is doing a tightrope walk to avoid slipping into the BJP’s Hindu-Muslim conflict trap. So far, he has been able to position his party as a pro-Hindu entity without being anti-Muslim. He decided to contest against Narendra Modi in Varanasi in 2014 and then went into the lion’s den in Gujarat in 2022. He wanted to signal — and this is not missed by many Muslims — that it was he who was taking on Modi frontally.

But keeping Muslims on his side is only one part of the challenge Kejriwal faces today, as AAP seeks to expand its footprints. He knows he has to dent the BJP’s Hindu vote-bank to become a big player. For only then, will the Muslims come to him — as they did in most of Delhi. It won even in the Congress traditional Muslim strongholds like Ballimaran, Matiamahal, Chandni Chowk. For most of the voters saw the Congress as a “thee”(has been) party, but Kejriwal is a “hai” (present now) party.

Can Kejriwal scale up to a national political player in India, many ask, without engaging with the deep fault lines of identity politics? Every party, after all, talks about education, health, bijlee, paani, but they also have, in addition, the support of either Yadavs or Kurmis or MBCs or Dalits or the Hindu community as a vote block.

Kejriwal has managed to win convincingly in Delhi on the basis of delivery. But then Delhi is a cosmopolitan, urbanized city state. He also did it in Punjab, but he was helped on by the widespread anger over the farm laws, the endemic drug problem, the mess in schools, and the base he created last time. In Gujarat he made inroads in the rural areas of Saurashtra on the basis of his reputation as someone who had “delivered” on schools, health facilities, water and electricity. This may not happen in the Hindi heartland.

Can schools and hospitals, then, fashion a new narrative in Indian politics? They are the means for realizing young Indians’ soaring aspirations, particularly among lower sections which have for long not had access to good education or to nutrition and health.

The next year is a challenge: Kejriwal or AAP isn’t a player in most of the nine states going to the polls. He may try and create a political space for himself in more states, like Haryana, to which he belongs — where elections are due in October 2024. But his eyes would be set on 2029. He could be a “lambi daur ka ghoda.” For, to build a party from scratch is no easy task.

AAP will need to return to the drawing board after Gujarat, Himachal and MCD elections. While Kejriwal has to tread carefully in Punjab, it is good old Delhi that could be his springboard to success, a replicable model that every state of India would want to copy. For, Delhi, in many ways, is a city more India in microcosm than any other. Now that he has MCD under his control, can he show visible changes that build a modern capital which does India proud?

Clear the rubbish dumps, cover the drains, multiply the reformed government schools, increase mohalla clinics, enhance girls’ enrolment, secure public spaces for women, work with Punjab to check stubble burning, deal with the yearly menace of malaria, chikunguniya and dengue, moot new ideas for agriculture and work with Punjab, where he has his government, to start building a clean, pollution-free, modern capital? His advisors should tell him that this is, by no means, elitist or pro-rich, it is an imperative for every aam aadmi.

So far, he has trimmed their pani and bijlee bills, and, yes, that’s a big cushion in inflationary times. He has improved schools and that has kindled hope for the aam aadmi to stand up and ask for more.

In a year when the Central Vista will start showing a revamped landscape in the heart of the capital, can AAP add its own imprint to the city? For the aam admi, “kaam” is Kejriwal’s main draw, integrally linked to the politics he is trying to fashion. It is that which gives him a unique identity — that’s the message from Mustafabad, local, as AAP looks national.

Neerja Chowdhury, Contributing Editor, The Indian Express, has covered the last 10 Lok Sabha elections.