Written by Ratnadeep Chakraborty and Hibah Bhat
This article first appeared on March 25, 2018 and was written in the context of the upcoming Karnataka Assembly elections.
Releasing its first list of 18 candidates on Tuesday 20 March 2018 at the Press meet in Bengaluru Hotel, AAP has finally made a debut in Karnataka Assembly elections 2018. After the failure of the party in 2017 assembly elections in important areas such as Gujarat and Goa, the party has once again stood up in Karnataka and announced to contest the elections on all the assembly seats. According to the party, this decision was to a great extent taken after a recent privately commissioned survey which revealed that 80 percent of people are looking for a credible and alternate government. The party is currently looking for honest and committed candidates without any criminal or tainted background and will soon release another list, as per the sources.
Striving to break the triangular politics between BJP, Congress and JD(S), the party is working to become a true alternative for the people of Karnataka rather than a mere substitute. AAP has already set out with its political campaigning both online and in the streets. On talking to Prithvi Reddy, the state convener of AAP, he revealed certain grass-roots political strategies for campaigning in the 2018 Karnataka elections.
Such revised ideas like “Nukkad Natak” and volunteering work will be undertaken by ‘Gully Prabhari’, i.e., a person in charge of a particular street, citing the university crowd as the main target for these political street plays along with projector shows and flash mob mainly targeted towards the university students. The door to door voluntary campaigning will include two sets of documents informing the residents about the achievements of AAP’s Delhi government and details of the candidates, once the information is released, according to the election manifesto. There is one controversial strategy that the AAP and most political parties have resorted to in favor of increasing their popularity, and that is sticking posters on walls, and especially on city-funded murals. In August 2017, the Tamil Nadu government banned the sticking of any posters on murals, as the ideas of clean cities and streets are disrupted once a poster is seen sticking on a wall. AAP will face criticism from environmentalists to refrain from using this outdated political tactic, and use more eco-friendly methods, with the use of banners leading as the main alternative.
AAP is using auto drivers as another campaigning tool to empower the lower middle class, and have included one autorickshaw driver, Ayub Khan, in their 1st list of 18 candidates in the Karnataka Assembly Polls. Considering auto drivers as the backbone of AAP’s campaign and pulling huge support from them in Delhi which was a runaway success, the party has continued with its approach making the auto drivers feel empowered and started placing posters on Bengaluru auto rickshaws.
Similarly, AAP is re-invigorating its online presence, using Thunderclap, a crowd-speaking platform to reach a wider audience, and has many shares on Facebook and Twitter, since most of the users allow Thunderclap to post these messages on their timeline, and with a combined online base of 8 lakh, it is no surprise that the message is getting across. The party is also using Google+ and Hangouts to communicate with every election booth, according to the manifesto. The party has also taken a page directly from the BJP government, conveying election information and interacting with people through the medium of Twitter. They have also promised to release all digital and legal documents on Twitter, to maintain complete transparency. Realizing the potential that the youth have in Indian elections, AAP is pulling no punches and is utilizing a big chunk of their resources to maintain their large online presence during this election cycle.
“Though we are making great use of online platforms at the same time we discourage trolling and passing misinformation just to create hype among the people”, says Renuka Vishwanathan.
Undeniably the new battleground for the parties is the Web, but that is just one factor among many others and there is a need for ground-level action too. Speaking about the same, Prithvi Reddy tells us, “Our focus will be on the real issues like corruption as it (Karnataka) is the most corrupt state, and since our party has emerged from the anti-corruption movement, we want the state to get rid of this infamous tag. Neglect of certain regions and also farmer suicides are important issues, in terms of which Karnataka is ranked as number two and other political parties have majorly failed to deal with these issues”.
Prithvi Reddy has also stated that the party is ready to implement five regional capitals in Karnataka, saying,” Bengaluru is the only place in Karnataka that is being developed, so our party will implement five regional capitals to increase the number economical engines from one to six.” The AAP’s state convener also divulged plans to market Hugli Dalwar as the cultural capital of Karnataka, while seeking to implement Mangalore as the primary port city of the state. According to him, the party has plans to turn the small city of Devagiri as a logistics hub but has not discussed how the party is willing to achieve any of these ambitious goals.
“We are planning to promulgate our Delhi model of governance and our uniqueness lies in the diversity of party members, something no other party has done,” adds Prithvi Reddy.
Of the 18 candidates selected in the first round of the Karnataka Assembly Polls, many come from diverse backgrounds such as a farmer’s son, an autorickshaw driver, bureaucracy, a housewife, etc. One among them is Renuka Vishwanathan, a retired IAS officer now a member of AAP contesting elections and she states “Our approach in Karnataka would be the same, based on our political ideology. But what makes us unique from other parties is the diversity of our party candidates. “Apart from that AAP party is the only party working with 100% white money? Rather than providing temporary benefits to the poor people through MLA funds what most of the parties do, our party believes in framing the right policies from time to time and allocating funds for the right purposes”.
However with an interview with Kavitha Reddy (a senior leader of Congress party), while she did appreciate few initiatives of AAP like Mohalla clinics in health care and some work done by their civic activists’ candidates, she clearly refused to consider AAP as a competitor and stated that “the party hasn’t done any developmental work or political mobilization till now and are mainly focusing on the cities in the state rather than rural areas. Also, their candidates in which most of them are new, haven’t done substantial work for their constituencies, therefore, they have no basis to contest elections”.
Adding to that she further said that “AAP lacks consistency, which was quite evident when they contested in Lok Sabha elections for a couple of seats in Bengaluru and their candidate vanished. Even after you lose you have to be with the voters but they didn’t carry forward. They just contested, vanished and now again came back.”
Looking at the history of the elections, the residents of Karnataka have mostly voted for the candidate rather than the party, but AAP doesn’t want to follow this and is urging people to vote for the principles and morals of the party rather leaning on the personality factor. This is one of the primary reasons the party hasn’t disclosed its CM candidate yet.
With all the effort made, however, the Aam Aadmi Party hasn’t even made a dent in the political vehicle of Karnataka politics, and according to C-Fore’s election survey, AAP is predicted to win only 1-6 seats in the 224 seat assembly. The competition is mainly between Congress and BJP, with JDS trying to catch up with the numbers.
Transcript for the interview with Prithvi Reddy, chief of AAP Karnataka:
Q: Since AAP is famous for the unique campaigning ideas, and you are fighting for the first time in Karnataka what are your ideas this time that differentiate you from the other parties?
Ans: So our most powerful tool is door to door. Every constituency we are fighting, our volunteer team is going door to door to explain to people how we are different and how voting us will be beneficial for the state. We don’t have the money to advertise in newspapers, television, etc. So we are doing some unique ways of spreading our message. We also have a flash dance, the projector shows to show the achievements of the Delhi government
Q: What are the core issues that the party wants to contest elections on?
Ans: 1. It’s clear that Karnataka today is the most corrupt state and we as a party have come out of the Anti-Corruption Movement so that will be our first priority to rid the state of this infamous tag
2. We also want to get rid of the second infamous tag for being ranked as number two for farmer suicide in the country. Therefore farmer distress will be the second priority.
Bangalore has been recently declared as the worst governed city in the country. So our agenda would be to fix all the infrastructural issues, make Bangalore more environmentally viable, solve the problems of roads, sewage, water-related problems, and electricity. Apart from this, there are about 28 acres of road encroached by the government mafia and it will be our priority to reclaim those lands.
3. Compared to all other states in the country apart from Bangalore, Karnataka has only one growth engine. There are hugely neglected areas and the state has huge inequality in the development. So we plan to have five regional capital in the state which will act as the growth engine. Through these growth engines, we want to ensure sufficient for the youth. All exports from Karnataka are either going from Chennai or Mumbai port so we will develop Mangalore as a port, Hugli Dharwad as a cultural center and Devanagari as a logistics hub.
Alternate politics was a dream five years ago but in Delhi, after winning the huge mandate we have delivered huge pro-people results. We want to take that model of Delhi governance forward.
Q: What is your target audience?
Ans: You will be very surprised to know that in Delhi people across all demographics, age, income, religion, creed came together to give us that resounding victory because our politics is about issues and people identify with us. That is because our candidates represent everyone. This is a Youth party and we are not just doing things for people but we are ensuring that to make youth part of the election and the decision-making process. No other party will have a 26-year-old or a farmer’s son, auto driver or an IAS officer or even housewives, tech industry people nod farmer activist. We represent the common people and we believe that everyone is a potential voter.
Q4: You have also maintained a good image of your party candidates rather than other parties projecting their candidates as Gundaas?
Ans: We vouch for every candidate that will have no criminal, no corrupt or communal background. And if we find any such thing we would withdraw that candidate even at the last moment.
For me it’s not an election, it is a People’s movement. It is ‘DharamYudd’.
Ratnadeep Chakraborty 