BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Since the fledgling Aam Admi Party first came to power in the National Capital Territory of Delhi three years ago, its leader, Arvind Kejriwal, has been playing a high-stake game, leading to skirmishes.

In 2013, the AAP put an end to the Congress party’s 15-year-long rule in Delhi state and blocked its traditional rival, Bharatiya Janata Party, from returning to power. In the hung state assembly, it held 28 of the 70 seats, against the BJP’s 31 and the Congress party’s eight. To keep the BJP out of power, the Congress offered to back an AAP government, and Kejriwal became the chief minister.

A bureaucrat turned social activist, Kejriwal was part of Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement. Breaking with Hazare who was opposed to entry into electoral politics, he formed the AAP and mobilised support for it across the country using social media.

Taking a leaf from the Hazare movement for a national anti-corruption machinery, to be known as Jan Lokpal, Kejriwal drew up a bill to set up a Jan Lokpal for Delhi. The BJP and the Congress joined hands and blocked its introduction in the state assembly. Kejriwal who had been in office for only 48 days resigned.

He called for fresh elections to the assembly along with the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. The authorities did not concede the demand. In retrospect, he must be glad they rejected the demand.

Thanks to Narendra Modi’s vigorous, no-holds-barred campaign, the BJP made a clean sweep of Delhi’s seven Lok Sabha seats.

When fresh assembly elections were held in 2015, the Modi magic did not work. The AAP bagged 67 of the 70 seats, leaving just three for the BJP. The Congress was washed out.

Since then Kejriwal has been projecting himself as a potential challenger to Modi at the national level. On his part, Modi has not been able to forget the humiliation his party in the assembly elections. Delhi’s ambiguous constitutional status offers tremendous scope for both to act in furtherance of their personal and party interests.

Delhi, which served as the capital of many kingdoms, suffered a decline after the collapse of the Moghul regime. The British ruled the subcontinent initially from Calcutta (now Kolkata). They shifted the capital to Delhi in 1911. Twenty years later New Delhi, designed and constructed by British architect Edwin Lutyens, became the capital. 

In popular parlance, Delhi is a state, but under the Constitution it is one of seven Union Territories. Of the seven, two, Delhi and Puduchery, have elected assemblies with power to make laws applicable to their respective areas on certain subjects. With an area of 1,484 square kilometres and a population of about 25 million, Delhi is now India’s most populous city and the world’s second largest urban conglomeration.

Delhi’s unique status is based on the provisions of Articles 239AA and 239AB, which were introduced by the 69th Constitutional amendment, which was enacted in 1991, the National Capital Territory of Delhi Act of 1992 and the Transaction of Business of the Government of NCT of Delhi Rules of 1993.

Every country with a democratic system has found it necessary to devise methods to ensure that an elected body at a lower level is not able to create hurdles in the way of the federal authorities. The legislative measures of the 1990s were steps in that direction. Two factors have contributed to the present situation. One is that these are among the country’s worst drafted laws. The other is that both the BJP and the AAP are driven by political motives.

Kejriwal, who views Delhi as a springboard, is pursuing a two-fold strategy to build up a national image. He has taken some populist measures to endear himself to the people and initiated steps against some big business houses to project himself as a ruler who can act tough against the corporates. In the process, he has disregarded some of his constitutional limits.

Determined to foil Kejriwal’s plans, the Centre has used its legitimate overriding authority, exercisable through the state’s Lieutenant Governor, and sometimes even stepped beyond it. The Delhi high court recently quashed one of several cases registered by the police against AAP MLAs as the allegation was found to be false.

Kejriwal is mounting a big campaign to seize power in Punjab, where the Akali Dal-BJP government completes its term next year. The alliance and the Congress have been alternating in power in the state for decades. -- Gulf Today, August 9, 2016. 

Challenges to federalism

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The feud between the Bharatiya Janata Party, which heads the Central government, and the Aam Admi (Common Man) Party, which runs the Delhi state government, and the skirmishes between the Telugu Desam Party, which rules Andhra Pradesh state, and the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, which is in power in the recently created Telangana state, are sure signs of deterioration in India’s political climate.

The conduct of the constitutional authorities involved in the fracas poses threats to the future of democracy as well as the federal polity.

The trouble in the National Capital Territory of Delhi, which is not a full-fledged state, began as an ego clash between Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, both former bureaucrats.

Kejriwal had led the AAP to a massive victory in the Assembly elections last February, foiling Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s bid to bring Delhi state also under BJP rule. He believes the BJP is now seeking to rule the state using Najeeb Jung as proxy.

Relations between Jung and Kejriwal soured when the former appointed an officer of his own choice as the acting Chief Secretary, ignoring the Chief Minister’s wishes. Kejriwal retaliated by removing the officer who had issued the appointment order at Jung’s behest. Jung asserted that he alone was competent to appoint and transfer officers.

Throwing democratic niceties to the winds, the Centre endorsed Jung’s stand that he could act without consulting the elected government. The issue is now before the court.

Last week the Delhi police, which is under the control of the Lieutenant Governor, arrested State Law Minister Jitender Singh Tomar on a charge of using forged university degrees. If the arrest had not come in the wake of the battle between the Chief Minister and the Lieutenant Governor, it could have been viewed as an act in keeping with the principle that no one, howsoever high, is above the law.

Until recently the BJP was an ardent advocate of full statehood for Delhi. Its present stance shows that it is unwilling to forgive the AAP and the capital’s voters for dashing its hopes in Delhi and bringing the Modi juggernaut to a halt.

The trouble in the South is a fall-out of the division of Andhra Pradesh state, which had come into being in 1956 as the common home of the Telugu-speaking people who lay scattered in British Indian provinces and princely states during the colonial period. The Telangana state was carved out a year ago following prolonged agitation by people of the region, which was formerly part of the princely state of Hyderabad, alleging neglect by successive Andhra Pradesh governments.

Under the law enacted for the bifurcation, Hyderabad will serve as the capital of both Telangana and the residuary Andhra Pradesh state for 10 years. This arrangement was made to give AP time to build a new capital since Hyderabad is now part of Telangana. The two states also have a common Governor, who is in charge of law and order in the joint capital during the interim period.

A piquant situation arose when Telangana’s Anti-Corruption Bureau arrested A Revanth Reddy, a Telugu Desam Party MLA, on a charge of bribing a nominated member of the Assembly to vote for a TDP candidate in the Legislative Council elections. Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao later released the tape of an alleged conversation between Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and the nominated member to show that he (Naidu) was aware of the bribery.

Naidu said the tape was a fabricated one. He accused Chandrasekhar Rao’s party of encouraging defections from the state unit of TDP. Workers of the TDP filed complaints at several places in Andhra Pradesh against Chandrasekhar Rao and the Telangana Home Minister on charges of tapping Naidu’s phone.

Any step taken by any government against corruption deserves to be welcomed. But the developments in Hyderabad have to be viewed in the broad context of attempts by the two regional parties which hold power in the neighbouring states to settle political scores. An ugly situation involving a serious challenge to the federal structure can develop if the two Chief Ministers persist in the present course.

The Constitution is resilient enough to deal with tricky situations. But it can work smoothly only if constitutional authorities rise above petty politics and display statesmanship when the occasion demands it. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, June 16, 2015.

Strange power games in Delhi

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

A tussle is on in Delhi between the Central government headed by Bharatita Janata Party’s Narendra Modi and the administration of the National Capital Territory headed by Aam Admi Party’s Arvind Kejriwal. 

It was Kejriwal who put an end to Modi’s unbroken run of electoral victories. Modi had led his party to convincing victories in all Assembly elections held after he became Prime Minister except the one in Delhi. 

During the colonial period, Delhi, of which New Delhi, the national capital, is a part, was directly under the British Indian government. Under the Constitution which came into force in 1950, as a Union Territory, it remained under the Central government.

The Union Territory of Delhi had a council of ministers headed by a Chief Minister from 1952 to 1956. Thereafter the Centre ran it with the help of officials. In the 1990s, in response to popular demand for statehood, it was renamed the National Capital Territory of Delhi and given a Council of Ministers responsible to an elected Assembly with limited powers.

Under the new dispensation, the BJP ruled the state for five years. Thereafter the Congress was in power for 15 years, winning three elections in a row. In 2013, the BJP emerged as the largest party in the Assembly but could not muster enough support to chalk up a majority. Kejriwal formed an AAP government with the support of the Congress, which had been pushed down to the third place. The government lasted barely 100 days.

When fresh elections were held last February after a spell of President’s rule, the AAP won hands down: it picked up 67 of the 70 Assembly seats. The resounding victory was the result of a consolidation of non-BJP votes behind it. The Congress vote dropped so low that it could not win a single seat.

Since the BJP had made a clean sweep of all seven Lok Sabha seats of Delhi in last year’s parliamentary elections, it thought it would have an easy victory. Though Modi, as usual, campaigned vigorously, the party could get only three seats. The humiliating reverse apparently still rankles in him.

Kejriwal, who is given to theatrics, had staged street protests during his first term as Chief Minister. He began his second term by expelling from the party activist-lawyer Prashant Bhushan and psephologist Yogendra Yadav, who were his closest associates since he broke away from anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare to enter politics, saying one had to get into the system to reform it.

Kejriwal did not start the present fracas, and he is not in direct confrontation with Modi. It all began with Delhi’s Lieutenant Governor, Najeeb Jung, appointing Shakuntala Gamlin as Acting Chief Secretary overlooking his wishes.

Kejriwal, who has been trying to pressure the Ambanis and other business groups into reducing power rates, accused Gamlin of siding with the firms. He also relieved the Principal Secretary (Services), who had issued her appointed order, and locked his office.

Jung hit back. He asserted that he alone had the power to appoint officers and cancelled all appointments made by Kejriwal. 

At this stage the Centre intervened and issued a notification vesting full powers over appointment of Delhi state bureaucrats in the Lt-Governor. It also used the opportunity to curb the powers of the Anti-Corruption Bureau which the Kejriwal government had set up. This made it clear that it was motivated by considerations other than posting of bureaucrats.

The BJP was until recently an ardent advocate of full statehood for Delhi. It has now given up that position and is seeking to rule by proxy the state which rejected it convincingly in the elections.

Delhi has a population of about 11 million. There is, no doubt, force in the argument that as the seat of the central government Delhi has to be treated on a different basis from the other states. However, the democratic rights of its citizens need to be protected. It is absurd to suggest that that the Centre’s interests will be in jeopardy if the democratically elected government of Delhi has administrative control over its officers and is able to act against corrupt elements.

Both Jung and Kejriwal have raised the issue before President Pranab Mukherji. Since the issue involves interpretation of the constitutional and legal position, the Supreme Court is the right forum to resolve the issue. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, May 26, 2015.

A spanner in presidential works

BRP Bhaskar

Gulf Today

The signs of a presidential race in the making have dissipated somewhat and the parliamentary elections, due in a few months, may now follow the conventional pattern. The credit for this goes primarily to the new kid on the block, the Aam Admi Party.

With regional parties and small national parties gravitating towards the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance or the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance, before or after the elections, India has been going through a phase of coalition governments for some years.

In the elections of 2004 and 2009 the combined vote share of the Congress and the BJP was below 50 per cent. This meant that a majority of the voters were already with regional parties and small national parties. With their vote share expected to go up in this year’s elections, ambitious leaders of some of the parties began eying the prime minister’s chair.

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, whom the BJP picked as its prime ministerial candidate, altered the political scenario with a bold campaign in the recent assembly elections in four northern states, which the media had dubbed as a semi-final. He succeeded in creating an impression that the final will be a presidential kind of race between him and Rahul Gandhi, the Congress party’s presumptive prime ministerial nominee.

The BJP’s success in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh and its emergence as the largest single party in Delhi state appeared to confirm pollsters’ forecast that the BJP will emerge as the largest single party in the next Lok Sabha and earn the right to form the government. Modi sought to boost his prospects further by setting the goal of an absolute majority for his party.

As the implications of the Delhi verdict sank in, political observers found it necessary to reassess the situation. The AAP, which blocked the BJP’s return to power, was able to form the government in the state with the Congress extending support from outside. It has now announced plans to contest the Lok Sabha elections, raising an alarm in the coteries of the established parties.

Many imagined the AAP will confine itself to urban constituencies where it can hope to replicate the Delhi story. But the party has said it will field as many candidates as possible, the only restricting factors being its organisational limitations and the availability of suitable candidates.

As in the Delhi state elections, the AAP hopes to cash in on the people’s disgust with the corrupt ways of the mainstream parties. In Yogendra Yadav, its ideologue, the party has a valuable strategic planner. He has been studying Indian electoral behaviour for many years and is possibly more knowledgeable than anyone else in the country on the social dynamics of the polity at both the national and regional levels.

Yadav recently spoke of AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal as an alternative prime ministerial candidate. Kejriwal quickly dismissed the suggestion, which had the potential to bolster Modi’s bid to reduce the elections to a one-to-one fight for the top post, glossing over the complex problems for which the people are looking for solutions. 

The Modi juggernaut was already slowing down when Kejriwal threw a spanner in the presidential works. It will be back on the road again after a re-jig but it remains to be seen whether it can regain the lost momentum.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader J Jayalalithaa has set before her party the ambitious target of grabbing all 39 of the state’s Lok Sabha seats as well as Puducherry’s lone seat so as to give her a big role in national politics. Other state party leaders are sure to follow her lead with a view to maximising their bargaining power.

The Congress party, whose image is tarnished by corruption scandals, is yet to put its act together. Its governmental and organisational wings inspire little confidence. The party’s rank and file view Rahul Gandhi as its prime ministerial face, even though there has been no formal announcement to that effect.

He recently forced the Centre to abandon a proposed law to protect tainted legislators and got the Maharashtra government to re-examine its decision to reject the probe report on the Adarsh scam. Such stray interventions are not enough to convince the people that he can be the agent of change they are looking for. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, January 7, 2014.

An unlikely Indian Obama

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Gujarat Chief Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, whom some political opponents uncharitably derided for his humble origin as a tea seller, recently asked, “If Barack Obama could sell ice cream, what’s wrong if I sold tea?”

Modi may not fit the intelligent citizen’s idea of an Indian Obama but he is meticulously copying the first black US president’s successful campaigns in his pursuit of the country’s top post. His main handicap is that he has been faciling allegations of facilitating the Gujarat riots of 2002, by asking the police to give Hindus time to wreak vengeance on Muslims for killing Hindutva volunteers by torching a rail coach.

Taking a leaf out of the Obama campaign designed by Chris Hughes, a member of the Facebook founding team, Modi has mobilised a cyber force with the help of marketing experts for propaganda purposes. The My.BarackObama website which Hughes developed had attracted millions of volunteers who formed more than 35,000 community groups. These groups made a valuable contribution to Obama’s victory by holding about 200,000 events in their localities and making millions upon millions of phone calls to people in their neighbourhood. MyBO products flooded the market.

Obama’s detractors expanded MyBO into Mind Your Own Business but could not limit the impact of the campaign. Narendra Modi’s publicists have found an abbreviation NaMo, which, being close to a word of Hindu prayer, syncs with his Hindutva politics. They are now promoting the brand nationally. NaMo tea stalls have come up in some places and an online NaMo store is offering clothes, stationery and even smartphones with that brand name.

Modi also plans to use Google Hangouts, as Obama did.

As soon as the BJP picked Modi as its prime ministerial face, at the instance of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Hindutva power house, the party’s largest partner in the National Democratic Alliance, the Janata Dal (United), pulled out citing his alleged complicity in the Gujarat violence. This led to speculation that even if the BJP emerges as the largest single party in the new Lok Sabha, as forecast by pollsters, it may find it to difficult to attract enough outside support to chalk up a majority for a Modi-led government.

There have been suggestions that in such a situation the party will have to ditch Modi and plump for someone more acceptable to other parties like old warhorse Lal Kishen Advani or the younger Sushama Swaraj or Arun Jaitley.

Aware of this prospect, Modi has conceived a project, code-named India272+, with the goal of securing for the BJP more than 272 seats in the 573-member Lok Sabha so that it can form the government on its own. Considering that no party could get an absolute majority in the house in seven successive elections, this is an overambitious enterprise.

Modelled after the Hughes scheme, the India272+ online platform aggregates news and political content of relevance to the Modi campaign on a daily basis to help propagandists with ideas and solutions. It will also serve as a digital platform for grassroot-level effort with the audacious goal of winning every booth. As with the Obama campaign, the ultimate prize for the volunteers is one-to-one communication with the candidate.

An advertising expert was recently quoted as saying, “Brand Modi is a promise and as long as it delivers it will succeed. Even if the sales of NaMo merchandise are not very encouraging, it is the best way to get mileage for the party and create a buzz especially among the youth.”

Those who volunteered before December 25 were given time till today (December 31) to demonstrate their propagandist capabilities by making a visible contribution through interventions in Facebook, Twitter and other spaces. Final selection will depend upon an evaluation of their performance during this period.

Social media made a significant contribution to the Aam Admi Party’s remarkable performance in the Delhi state assembly elections. The AAP is now drawing up plans to replicate the Delhi experience in selected urban constituencies across the country in the parliamentary elections.

The Congress as well as several smaller parties are said to be exploring ways to catch up with the BJP and the AAP in cyber space.

The increased intervention by political parties has been spurred by a study report which claimed that social media could have a big impact in 160 of the 543 parliamentary constituencies. But, then, it also said social media will have low or no impact in as many as 316 constituencies. Obama did not face a digital divide of this size.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, December 31, 2013.

Harbinger of new politics

BRP Bhaskar
The Gulf Today

India’s mainstream political parties stand stupefied, not knowing how to cope with the fledgling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which made a stunning debut in the recent assembly elections in Delhi state.

A takeoff from Anna Hazare’s campaign for a tough anti-corruption law, the AAP dashed the Bharatiya Janata Party’s hope of regaining power and pushed the Congress party, which ruled the state for 15 years, down to the third place.

Its name comes from the Hindi words meaning Common Man. It chose as its election symbol the broom to signify its determination to clean the polluted political arena.

Hazare wasn’t pleased when Arvind Kejriwal, who was by his side when he fasted in Delhi in support of the demand for a Jan Lokpal (people’s ombudsman) decided to enter electoral politics and floated the party a year ago. But Kejriwal went ahead and drew to the party a large number of people, mostly urban youth, ready to devote time and money to advance the cause of clean politics.

Pollsters had said AAP would cut into the votes of the main parties resulting in a fractured verdict. The party did even better than they forecast. It came within striking distance of the leader of the pack, with a tally of 28 seats against the BJP’s 31.

The Congress got eight seats and the remaining three went to the Janata Dal (United), the Shiromani Akali Dal and an independent. The seat distribution blocked the BJP’s chance of mustering the support of five members needed to claim an absolute majority in the house of 70.

Kejriwal, 45, an engineering graduate, had worked as officer in the Income-tax department for 11 years before quitting to become a social activist. He received the Magsaysay award in 2006 for his contribution to the Right to Information campaign. He used the award money to found a body called Public Cause Research Foundation. He played a role in the drafting of the Jan Lokpal Bill which Hazare wants Parliament to pass.

When AAP announced plans to contest the Delhi elections, the Congress and the BJP did not view it as a serious contender. Chief Minister Sheila Dixit, who was to lead the Congress campaign for a fourth term, dismissed it as a bunch of broom-wielders. The BJP dubbed it a vote-cutter party and accused its leaders of being Congress agents.

As the elections approached the BJP realised the AAP had to be taken seriously. It asked Narendra Modi, its biggest crowd-puller, to address six rallies in the state, instead of the scheduled two. It did not help. The BJP’s vote share dropped from 36 per cent in 2008 to 34 per cent.

The AAP’s was no fluke performance. It cut into the votes of all parties to become the second largest party with 30 per cent of the votes polled. The Congress was the worst sufferer. Its vote share fell from 41 per cent to 25 per cent.

The AAP said the decimation of the Congress showed beyond doubt that there was yearning for change. The BJP’s inability to secure a majority showed the voters who wanted change were looking not for a substitute but for alternative politics.

It soon became evident that that there can be no smooth transition to alternative politics. After the BJP admitted to Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung that it lacks the numbers to form the government, he called in Kejriwal, as the leader of the next largest party. The Congress informed the Lt-Governor that it was ready to extend unconditional support to the AAP to form government. The BJP said it would provide constructive support.

Kejriwal, who saw the offers of support as a trap, wrote to the leaders of the two parties asking them to clarify their position on 18 issues. Some of the issues do not relate to Delhi administration, but fall in the realm of the Central government, led by the Congress, or the City Corporation, controlled by the BJP.

The BJP accused the AAP of making fun of democracy and shying away from responsibility.

While Delhi state’s future remains uncertain, enthused by the assembly election results, the AAP, which many view as the harbinger of a new kind of politics, has announced plans to contest the Lok Sabha elections due in less than five months. It remains to be seen whether it can replicate on the national scene its performance in a minuscule state which is almost entirely urban. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, December 17, 2013.

Lessons of Assembly elections: Assumptions and reality

B.R.P.Bhaskar                                                                                                                          Special to IANS

The visual media has reduced the massive electoral exercise into a spectator sport. With the upcoming Lok Sabha elections in mind, it billed the recent four-state Assembly elections as the semi-final, giving them the air of a football game. Since it has fallen for the Bharatiya Janata Party's ploy of casting the polls in the form of a presidential contest between Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi, the final may well turn out to be a mini-screen boxing bout.

Since conditions in the rest of the country differ vastly from those in these four states, it is risky to draw nationally valid conclusions from so-called semi-final.

Yet if one goes beyond the instant analyses provided by the channels, which were generally marked by professional deficiency and political bankruptcy, it is possible to detect changes in the political scenario which hold some lessons beyond what they found.

All the four states have been battlegrounds where the Congress and the BJP were in direct confrontation in successive elections. Delhi was with the Congress for 15 years at a stretch, and Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh with the BJP for 10 years. Rajasthan regularly changed hands.

This time Delhi abandoned the Congress but did not end up in the BJP's hands as the newly formed Aam Admi Party threw the spanner in the Congress-BJP works. While both MP and Chhattisgarh opted to stay with the BJP for five more years, Rajasthan stuck to the pattern of alternating between the Congress and the BJP.

The change in Rajasthan was brought about by a drop of three percentage points in the Congress's vote share and a 12 percentage point rise in the BJP's. Beating the hyped anti-incumbency factor, the BJP boosted its vote share in MP by eight percentage points. The Congress, too, raised its vote share in the state by about four percentage points, which means the BJP did not gain at its expense. In Chhattisgarh, too, both the BJP and the Congress raised their vote share by two percentage points each.

In Delhi, there was a dramatic change in the Congress party's fortune. It suffered a massive fall of 15 percentage points in its vote share. The BJP too lost votes, its share slipping three percentage points. The AAP, on its debut, claimed an impressive 30 percent of vote share.

In all the states, the vote share of the small players dwindled. The chief sufferer was the Bahujan Samaj Party, which had shown signs of growth in earlier elections. This is a development that strengthens the trend towards a two-party system which was in evidence in the Hindi states where the Congress and the BJP are in direct confrontation.

For the present the AAP has altered the Delhi scenario by upsetting the emergent two-party system involving the Congress and the BJP. It is too early to say whether it will evolve into a multi-party state, like, say Uttar Pradesh, or return to the old pattern.

The AAP's performance is not unprecedented as excited young television anchors tried to project. In the 1980s, in Andhra Pradesh, the Telugu Desam Party founded by N.T. Rama Rao had made an even more spectacular performance. It not only stormed into power within nine months of its formation but went on to become the main opposition in the Lok Sabha on the strength of its 33 seats from the state.

A widely circulated newspaper had a big role in the TDP's stunning electoral debut. In this respect, a vague parallel can be drawn between the TDP and the AAP. Part of the credit for the AAP's impressive showing belongs to the channels which had boosted Anna Hazare's Jan Lokpal movement, which provided Arvind Kejriwal with the momentum to launch the AAP.

In some respects Delhi is a microcosm of India. But it is by no means typical of India. It is almost entirely urban. Only 2.50 percent of the state's population is classified as rural. No state or city, barring perhaps Mumbai, is under as much bombardment by television as Delhi is. Therefore, the chances of replication of the Delhi experiment nationally are not very bright.

There is, however, no denying that the AAP's emergence has created a new situation. Its campaign against corruption has evoked a good response in towns and cities across the country. This poses a problem mainly for the Congress and the United Progressive Alliance, which are facing graft charges, but, as the Delhi voting figures indicate, the BJP too is not immune from its effect.

The media assessment of Narendra Modi's contribution to the BJP's electoral performance deserves a close look. Its vote share gain of 12 percentage points in Rajasthan and eight percentage points in MP are above the normal range of swing in states where the two-party system has emerged. It can, therefore, be attributed to the Modi effect. Inasmuch as it did not manifest itself in Delhi, as evidenced by the drop in the party's vote share in that state, the assumption that Modi has a tremendous appeal among urban youth is open to question.