Politics - The most beautiful game
The beauty of politics, especially in India, lies in the fact that it can make or break anyone. The results of Delhi’s polls display clearly, the fact that complacence has no place in the game at all. I’m a BJP supporter and have no qualms in admitting to that. I am however warming up to the idea of how what has happened today in the nation’s capital is possibly the best thing that could emerge out of Delhi. Let me explain.
Delhi is indeed a large city and an extremely important one at that. Nowhere else in the country does one see the need for a synergy of sorts between the local government and the central one as in Delhi. The fact that the Indian National Congress managed to cling onto it for a decade and a half is proof that the people there voted in a similar fashion during both the Assembly polls as well as the Lok Sabha. They now seem to have taken a cue from my own state, Karnataka, and have started voting for whatever option seems the best at that respective level.
There is absolutely no doubt in any reasonable citizen’s mind that on a national level, we are only seemingly a multiparty democracy while in reality, there never has been a credible and strong third front. The same hold good for several states as well, and until recently, Delhi was one of them. The Aam Aadmi Party has the market-product fit. There’s a gap in the market for a party that people who want an alternative other than the two national parties and they have the first mover advantage there as well.
Several people have called this two-year-old party a fledgling startup and that is certainly a legitimate way to look at them. They have, however, been lucky in ways that no other startup can dream of. They blew up their seed fund and reached their first milestone fairly quickly, only to pivot and enter a larger and more fierce market while ignoring the niche yet lucrative one they were already kings at. They then failed so hard that they were forced to raise Series A from every VC firm that would still talk to them and even some unknown ones (sic) and eventually, they’ve managed to re-enter their original market with a leaner board of directors but with more ambitious projections and an evaluation that seems Uberesque.
How they use this second chance is now left to them. The last time they screwed up, they had the Congress to throw some blame on. They had the “too new to the game” tag and the “lack of funds” cards. This time, they don’t. This time, they’ve won fair and square. They’ve won with margins that dwarf any that we’ve seen in the recent past and they’ve got exactly what they dream of: A city full of hope which believes in them and a Central government which is the lesser of the two evils that could’ve been. It is now upto them to make the best use of this chance and attempt to prove every cynic wrong.
As a BJP supporter, this is amazing because a failure of this magnitude brings with it a textbook so thick that it would put Halliday and Resnick to shame. There is no such thing as invincible and even the most ruthless of strategists can fail; hard. The BJP has so far been successful in every election it has contested due to one factor alone: they always respected and rewarded the party workers who toiled at the grassroots level. There will be many who say that bringing in Miss Bedi was always a gamble or that it was a way to deflect blame, but clearly the secret lies in the fact that the one trait any organization must learn to value is loyalty. In fact, the most important foundation of any relationship is loyalty and the day that is taken for granted is the day the descent begins.
I’m hopeful that the BJP will take this opportunity to introspect in a mature manner and the AAP will not squander away something that every Chris Brown wishes he got, a second chance from someone who suffered at their hands. All the best to Delhi. Jai Hind!