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Populism-II:
States and Political Parties

Rajat Roy
Sumona DasGupta

2019
Contain

1. Populist Politics and Practices in Competitive Democracy,
Chhattisgarh - A Case Study

by Rajat Roy

1-14
2. Political Parties and Populist Policies in
Contemporary India: Some Reflections on AAP

by Sumona DasGupta

15-29

Political Parties and Populist Policies in
Contemporary India: Some Reflections on AAP

∗

Sumona DasGupta

Introduction

There is little definitional clarity around the term populism. Though the use of this term has proliferated in the last decade, in common parlance there appears to be a pejorative even alarmist connotation associated with it because of its association with authoritarian leaders and policies that exploit the fears and anxieties of the masses for short term gains. A more nuanced view of populism however situates it in the context of the disillusionment of working classes with the crisis of what Nancy Fraser calls modern hegemonic, globalized, financialized forms of capitalism. Some have even viewed it as a counter concept to neoliberal politics which remains committed to free movement of capital and deregulated finance despite bringing in some mitigating politics of recognition (Frazer 2018). Regardless of the light in which populism is viewed there are mixed views on how it is connected with democracy and democratic institutions.
In this paper we move away from a value laden connotation of populism as an ideology and stay with an understanding that resonates the most easily with an Indian context - namely any policy, strategy, and movement that is redistributive in nature and as such favours the common person particularly those in subordinate positions, over the elite typically represented by large business and financial interests. The contrast between the ‘people’ and ‘elite’ is perhaps the only way the term populism can retain its analytical usefulness without getting bogged down in polemical discussions as to whether populist movements/policies represent the ideological right or the left, whether it is authoritarian or democratic in its origin, whether it represents a movement or simply a discursive style.
This paper will examine selected populist policies launched in contemporary India by a party that grew out of a popular movement against corruption namely the Aam Aadmi Party (hereafter AAP) which by its very name creates a implicit contrast between the “people” and the ruling elite. By tracing its birth and trajectory and focusing on the broad trends of its populist politics and some specific policies we seek to gain a deeper understanding of how a movement “for the people” transitioned into a political party which then had to make policies that were seen to be pro people (pro “aam aadmi”). We also reflect on what this populism implies in terms of democratic decision making and longer term impacts on the economic and political front.

∗

Sumona DasGupta is a political scientist, researcher and independent consultant and is also a Senior Visiting Fellow with Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) & CRG-RLS Researcher, Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata Policies and Practices, Issue No. 107, December 2019

Populism: Finding a Working Definition

The use of the term populism has a long political history which is outside the purview of this paper. We may note however in passing with Roderik (2018) that the term originates from nineteenth century movements such as farmers workers and miners rallying against the gold standard and Northeastern banking in the US and the Peronism of Latin America. Contemporary populism takes on different manifestations in different political contexts. It has for instance manifested in the anti immigrant parties and policies in Europe, Trump’s anti trade nativism in the US, the economic populism of Chavez in Latin America, the rise of the Independence Party in UK and the India against corruption movement in 2011 to name but a few. He has traced the economic roots of populism to what he terms as “globalization shocks” arguing that this was a predictable outcome of the changes in technology, unfair markets, erosion of labour market protection and rising income inequalities. Roderick (2018) identifies four common elements that appears to cut across these diverse manifestations of populism, namely an anti establishment orientation, a claim to speak for the people against the elites, opposition to liberal economics and globalization and often a penchant for authoritarian governance.
It is one thing to empirically identify come common elements across various manifestations of populism. It is however far more challenging to arrive at common conceptual understandings and working definitions of this term. In the last decade or so populism appears to have been used to denote either an ideology (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2012), a form of movement organization (Taggard 1995), a policy orientation (Weyland 2001), a discursive style or form of communication (Shils 1972; Laclau 2005).
Given the different ways in which this term has been used over the years the question is: how does it retain its analytical significance? Perhaps the only way it can, is to use it, as Subramayam (2007) argues with an oppositional concept. If populism comes from the people and implies in its most rudimentary sense anything (a programme, a movement, a policy) that champions the common person the oppositional concept is that of an unfairly dominant elite. As Subramanyam (2007) goes on to argue what this would mean in practical terms is that it would involve an element of redistribution and reallocation either in terms of political power or economic resources. Politically in its democratic form populism is critical of anything that mediates the relationship between the people and their leader or government and as such it favors more direct rather than mediated forms of democracy. This could take the form of referendums and popular initiatives which have been adopted in some states of the US for instance and of course in more direct forms of democracies such as Switzerland. In its authoritarian version populism can revolve around a charismatic ruler who claims that he embodies the people’s will to consolidate his own power like many Latin American leaders like Peron and Chavez. This brand of populism has been responsible for the pejorative connotation often ascribed to it where the prefix populist is used to insult a party, project or policy (Lara 2018).
In terms of economic redistribution the term populism is used to denote policies that involve redistribution of resources and wealth in favour of the less privileged. This could range from progressive taxation to more direct schemes such as free health services for the poor, cash benefits, all manner of subsidies, loan waivers etc (Subramanyam 2007). Such populist policies would of course end up prioritizing short term popularity over long term economic considerations of debt or inflationary pressures.
Using this lens of populism in this paper we look at a relatively new political party (Aam
Aadmi Party (AAP) which in fact grew out of what at least appeared to be a populist movement and

2

see whether the AAP storyline helps sheds light on the relationship between populism and democratic institutions. Indeed the case of AAP seems to be almost a textbook case of populist politics as defined by the post Marxist Latin American thinker Laclau in his influential book On Populist Reason published in 2005. Laclau believes that at certain historical moments multiple antagonisms are at play which may or may not have something to do with class consciousness. As a result of these antagonisms people are compelled to assume a new identity – Laclau calls this empty signifier or floating signifier - that transforms them into political actors. When people identify with this floating signifier it gets filled with political content and what we get is a distinctly populist political mobilization as opposed to a revolutionary one (Sampath 2015).
The floating signifier does not represent an ideology but any ideology including totalitarian ones can don the populist garb – hence its link to any ideology at a given moment is contingent. Instead of an ideology he sees populism as a form of construction of the political that dichotomizes the society into two levels- the bottom and the top with the bottom mobilizing against the top. The driver of such a mobilization is what he calls the “logic of equivalence” where a number of disparate demands – security, healthcare, education, water, housing which would earlier get channeled to the state administration independently – now acquire a collective form and articulation and universal significance. When people’s demands keep rebounding off the government machinery and remain unfulfilled for long this new identity is formed in opposition to a common enemy (Laclau 2005).
In the case of AAP the empty signifier or floating signifier was the new identity of the citizen who would no longer be a passive victim of a corrupt elite. The social dichotomy that Laclau considers central to populism was in evidence right from AAP’s pre-history as an anti corruption movement where the “Aam Aadmi” whose interests were not finding representation among the elite political establishment was mobilized against the latter. So the common enemy becomes corruption. The symbol of that common enemy is the political elite. Here we note that by designating the victim as “aam aadmi”, it taps into the class divide without however activating class politics (Sampath 2015). So Laclau’s term the empty signifier or floating signifier is very much in evidence because after all who is the aam admi? It could be a farmer, a banker, a construction worker, a domestic helper, or even a banker and media-person. This is because the idea of people as Aam Aadmi “floats.” On one hand, it denotes the bottom of the pyramid at another the population as a whole – every single Indian whether rich or poor will also identify as part of the Indian people (Sampath 2015). This is why AAP has support across classes and from both Left and Right.

AAP: The Trajectory

The inception of AAP is traced to the civil society movement of April 2011 under the banner India against Corruption led by Anna Hazare and directed against the corruption scandals that had rocked the Congress led UPA regime. Led by a coalition of activists from varied backgrounds the movement demanded the passage of the Jan Lokpal bill in parliament to end corruption.
Tracing its own history the party website describes the momentum of the movement and its metamorphosis into a political party in the following way. (aamadmiparty.org)

Spanning over two years, across hundreds of cities, towns and villages, lakhs of people mobilised themselves for this cause. Protest marches, gheraos of politicians, social media campaigns. Led by social activist Anna Hazare, thousands of people in several locations sat on fasts on three separate occasions to build support for the Jan Lokpal Bill, and pressure the government into acting on people’s demand. At the end of the third and final fast, despite all efforts of the IAC, the Parliament had still not come around to passing the Jan Lokpal.

3

That’s when one section of IAC activists, led by Arvind Kejriwal, decided that the only way to rid this country of corruption was to join politics, enter government and clean up the system from within. Thus began the journey of the anti-corruption protest towards the political revolution called the Aam Aadmi Party.

Along with Arvind Khejriwal the other prominent activists who formed the splinter group from the movement and entered the political fray included Yogendra Yadav, Anand Jha, Prashant Bhushan and Shanti Bhushan. Each of these personalities was well respected in their sphere and the beginnings of AAP was marked by what appeared to be a commitment to a sense of collective leadership drawn from all walks of life in tune with the aspirations of the people and in keeping with its populist image. However all these early pioneers have since parted ways with Khejriwal who has emerged as the undisputed leader of AAP rendering the notion of collective leadership redundant very soon. Khejriwal has continued to actively add a series of populist policies to the overall plank of the anti corruption crusade and the vision of “alternate politics” that the party espoused.
If we look at the birth of the AAP party and how it describes its own trajectory on the website.(aamadmiparty.org/about/our-history) it is clear that the idea of the ruling political elite who profit from the big ticket corruption and the common citizens who are victims of these political elites are the two “combat” concepts around which the populist narrative is woven. The populism of AAP in the run up to the elections of 2013 was evident in the following ways.
1. Open Membership: Opening the membership of the party to the “people”: By opening the floodgates for the “aam aurat” and the “aam aadmi”to join the party bypassing the usual gatekeepers who typically control membership within the party AAP registered a shift in the history of political parties in India. Breaking through traditional fiefdoms and communal organizations the party presented a new opportunity for women and men, young and old, poor and rich to join politics with the intention of changing the way politics had hitherto been done.
2. Transparent party funding: Once AAP decided to throw its hat into the political arena by contesting elections it had to find a method for financing its activity that was in keeping with its populist credo – that of transparency. AAP pioneered the crown sourcing model of electoral fundraising in India with small donations to keep the party running.
3. Choice of subjects as the primary election issue: In the run up to the first election contested by AAP in Delhi – the Delhi assembly elections of 2013 – AAP raised the inflated bills for electricity and water as the primary election issues as this affected all sections of the people and helped place its promise of anti corruption centre stage. The inflated bills were linked with the ruling Congress government’s collusion with power distribution companies and the water tanker mafia. Through this carefully crafted choice of its election plank AAP was able to gain the image of a political force that could take on the powerful ruling elite on behalf of the people. On the back of this populist appeal AAP made its debut on the political firmament by winning winning 28 (out of 70) seats in the Delhi Assembly elections of 2013. After consulting the people of Delhi on government formation, the party formed a minority government with Arvind Kejriwal as Chief Minister on 28th December, 2013. After failing to pass the Jan Lokpal Bill due to a lack of numbers in the Delhi Assembly, the AAP government resigned in February 2014 to seek a fresh and full mandate. Despite losing all seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections that was held before fresh assembly elections to Delhi could be held, the AAP was able to recover lost ground. In the Delhi assembly elections the AAP won 67 out of 70 with a record vote share of 54%.

4

Post Election Populist Politics of AAP: Some Explorations

Post election AAP’s populism surfaced in many ways and we map some of these in this section. Populist politics were manifested in:
1. The framing of the party constitution 2. The Delhi dialogues 3. Setting out a new institutional design for governance with empowered Gram Sabhas and
Mohalla Sabhas.
4. Inviting people’s verdicts on important questions in-between elections 5. Initiating direct action by citizens 6. Renewing its commitment to transparent and accountable governance at all times
We examine each of these in turn. Exemplifying the populist notion of “popular self-rule” the AAP, in article II of its constitution stated: “democracy is popular self rule but the current practice of democracy negates this ideal and reduces the citizen to a mere subject.” Therefore AAP sought to “restore power to the people” and realise the promise of Swaraj enshrined in the Constitution. Indeed the objectives of the party read almost like a page out of the textbook on populism. (aamaadmiparty.org/about/constitution)
In keeping with this overall philosophy of “restoring power to the people” AAP, in its manifesto, defined politics as an “interactive process, a constant dialogue.” Soon after the Delhi assembly was dissolved in November 2014 the party launched the Delhi dialogue, a participatory process of drawing up the party manifesto by forging a partnership between the party and the citizens of India with their lived everyday experience which could be brought to the table along with the views of professionals and experts. It drew up a 70-point actionable plan for all sections of

Delhi’s population – youth, women, traders, businesses, entrepreneurs, rural and urban villages, safai karmacharis, minorities, unauthorized and resettlement colonies, JJ clusters, RWAs, housing cooperatives and group housing societies. The aim of the Delhi Dialogue was to create an action plan for a Delhi that would reflect among other things the aspirations of people from all walks of life with its emphasis on employment, high quality education excellent healthcare to all,safety of women, more roads, transport and traffic systems, affordable electricity and clean drinking water to all its citizens, and a Delhi where the citizen is made an equal stakeholder and voice in the city’s progress (Party

Manifesto 2015). (aamaadmiparty.org/wp-content/uploads)
When AAP entered politics it did have an institutional design in mind that it felt would be more in keeping with the idea of “Swaraj” or self rule. This was evident in Arvind Khejriwal’s book Swaraj (2012) in which he outlined how institutions like Gram Sabhas and Mohalla sabhas should be vested with actual financial powers and powers to appoint and recall government officials. In his institutional design for swaraj the Gram Sabha (village council consisting of all adult members of the village) lies at the centre piece. According to Khejriwal (2012) “The day the gram sabhas start to operate across the country, with power vested in them, that is the day the people will have direct control over the parliament.” The redesigning of institutions to make it participatory and citizen oriented is based on the assumption that the new empowered institutions at the grassroots will be free of corruption or if they are indeed corrupt it is somehow better than the corruption evident in the system right from the top. To understand this version of AAP’s populism Khejriwal’s words in his book Swaraj (2012) are instructive:

“It is believed by many that free fund sent directly to the gram sabhas will be misused by the people. How will it be misused was our question? If a sum of rupees three crore is made available to gram

5

Sabha then it is possible that all villagers decide to keep this money or in other words distribute amongst themselves and not use for their own development. Our reply is then let them do this. Even today what is happening that the entire money is embezzled by the politicians, the officials, the collector, the BDO, the tehsildar. If the villagers have decided to keep this money by themselves, in a joint meeting, then let it be so. The people’s money has gone back to the people and not to the middlemen.”

Khejriwal however believes that this embezzlement will not happen in practice as people will be invested in their own development though his document does not set out explicitly a system of checks and balances to prevent this. If it happens he is willing to cast a benign attitude to it, in a populist narrative laced with ordinary people versus the political elite. He acknowledges that while it is not likely that the Gram Sabha will misuse money it is possible that the sarpanch may be corrupt and may embezzle funds but “in the new dispensation that we are proposing there is going to be transparency on the size of allocation of funds and the power to dispose off that fund the way the villagers want. Once the people have the power to raise their voices against the sarpanch, the BDO, the Collector and the state government then there are very few chances that this money could be siphoned off easily by all the concerned officials and politicians.”
AAP’s populism manifested itself in the vision to provide corruption free services to the people as this was their right but believed rather simplistically, it could be argued, that a quick transfer of power to the panchayat would take care of the problem. The ideology, the programme of action, the budgetary implications were not however spelt out and at the end of the day AAP ended up vociferously stating what it was opposed to rather than spending more time on what it proposed to do in order to give a concrete form and shape to its populist framework, defined here as redistribution of political and economic power in favour of the ordinary people and marginalized groups.
How did AAP conduct itself in the political arena after entering politics? Given its populist vision it is worth noting that ostensibly in keeping with the principles of direct democracy AAP sought the “people’s verdict” as to whether they should form a minority government after the elections of 2013. However this same consultation was dispensed with when CM Kejriwal resigned after 49 days of governance. The fledgling party was discovering that direct democracy and direct action had its limitations and that populist politics could not be applied in every instance (Jayal 2016). A rather unusual manifestation AAP’s version of “direct citizen action” also took the form of initiating a series of sting operations where every citizen was encouraged to use a smart phone to “catch” corrupt officials. This backfired when the party started doing internal stings on one another leading two prominent members Yogendra Yadav and Shazia Iilmi to resign (Jayal 2016).
As Jayal (2016) points out populist politics manifests through a politics of impatience, rejection and accusation sometimes directed at foreigners and ethnic others. The most controversial example of this was the midnight raid of January 2014 in Delhi’s Khirki extension where AAP’s then law minister with TV cameras turned on asked the police to enter the building without a warrant and question four Ugandan women he claimed had been indulging in drugs and prostitution. The entire affair showed in no uncertain terms the dangers of populist vigilantism and the racist and violent tendencies it can unleash. Striking a populist stand the minister justified the action by claiming that the “people” of that area were with him when he took this action. This action came under severe fire from the party’s own women members including one of its founder members Madhu Bhaduri who alleged "AAP has the same mentality as Khap Panchayats on gender justice that is why AAP leadership justifies Khap Panchayats". (Debobrat Ghose 2014)

6

The populism of AAP was predicated on a single notion- that of transparency and anti corruption. Everything else flowed from this. Transparency becomes not a means to an end but an end in itself. The obsession with transparency as an end in itself also meant that inadequate thought was being given to the long term economic goals of the party and the disagreements regarding this were probably responsible for the delay in drafting the party manifesto (Jayal 2016).
From the overall directions that the populist politics of AAP has taken two things stand out.
First it became increasingly evident that the assumption that populist politics is inherently participatory is flawed. As the party grew in strength Arvind Khejriwal became more and more its focal point. In the TV advertisements Khejriwal is clearly portrayed as a savior and the party ended up spending huge amounts of tax payer’s hard-earned money on publicity and propaganda with his photograph towering over the party name and symbol. (Praveen Rai 2017) The centralized style of leadership has increasingly come in for criticism in a party that championed devolution of power (Jayal 2016). As Praveen Rai (2017) points out “the personality cult nurtured by AAP was unique as it went far beyond the distinction between self-esteem and narcissism, unparalleled in the history of Indian party politics.” On one hand the party saw itself as pioneering an alternate politics based on participation of the people on the other hand within its own structures there appeared to be an absence of inner party democracy. Indeed Madhu Bhaduri another founder member who has since left the party alleged that the party allowed little room for dissent and recounts how she was sidelined when she spoke out against the raid at Khirki extension (Bhaduri 2016).
Second, we see that since the populist politics of AAP is constructed on a simple binary formulation of “people” versus the “ruling class” it only acknowledges the power imbalance between the people and the politicians. It fails to take into account the complex power play at the intersection of class, caste, religion and gender and other faultlines that marks all of political life in India. The result is a very technocratic and simplistic approach to politics. Srirupa Roy (2014) in her ethnographic study of AAP’s politics has shown how all problems were seen as having a simple solution by way of just getting the concerned official to follow the rule book. Roy chronicles several “intervention stories” where intractable problems faced by citizens ranging from having difficulty in registering a case at the police station to fixing potholes or getting themselves registered as voters in the absence of commonly accepted identity documents were all seen to have been resolved by AAP workers by applying the relevant law or legislative detail.

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    1 Political Parties and Populist Policies in Contemporary India: Some Reflections on AAP Sumona Dasgupta There Appears to Be

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  • Compilation of Practices – Urban Services & Reforms in Indian Cities

    Compilation of Practices – Urban Services & Reforms in Indian Cities

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    Infrastructure, Labor, and Government A Study of Delhi Airport A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the award for the degree Doctor of Philosophy From Western Sydney University Mithilesh Kumar Institute for Culture and Society Western Sydney University 2017 Statement of Authentication The work presented in this thesis is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, original except as acknowledged in the text. I hereby declare that I have not submitted this material, either in full or in part, for a degree at this or any other institution. Sections of chapter 2 have been previously published in Kumar, Mithilesh. 2017. “Law, Statistics, Public-Private Partnership and the Emergence of a New Subject.” In Accumulation in Post-Colonial Capitalism, edited by Iman Kumar Mitra, Ranabir Samaddar, and Samita Sen, 59-74. Singapore: Springer. Parts of chapter 2 have also been published in Kumar, Mithilesh. 2016. “Terra Firma of Sovereignty: Land Acquisition and Making of Migrant Labour.” In Cities, Rural Migrants and the Urban Poor- III: Migration and the Urban Question in Delhi, 74: 37-49. Policies and Practice. Kolkata: Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group. .............................................................................. (Signature) Acknowledgments The completion of this thesis was not a realistic possibility even six months before the submission. That it has been successful in seeing the light of the day is wholly due to my supervisors: Brett Neilson and Ned Rossiter. They held my hand gently but firmly helping me cross the finishing line and they did it with much care and concern. I thank Greg Noble—HDR Director when I began my candidature. He helped me navigate the process of applying for leaves and extensions due to my health problems.