When parties promise freebies in their manifestos, they should mandatorily explain how they plan to finance them. The AAP has appropriated this business of offering freebies as a ‘patented’ solution to win elections.
AAP: Hype Without Substance
Kejriwal’s addiction to drama and narcissism will empty the taxpayer pockets. For a leader who hyped austerity as AAPians commandment, Kejriwal is the master of spin, advertising himself to glory at taxpayers’ expense.
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दम्भो दर्पोऽभिमानश्च क्रोधः पारुष्यमेव च।
अज्ञानं चाभिजातस्य पार्थ सम्पदमासुरीम्।।
Arrogance, pride, anger, conceit, harshness and ignorance are qualities of those with nefarious nature.
After facing significant reverses in recent elections, the mood of AAP leaders would have taken a beating for sure. With little to show on ground, it becomes important to keep the party supporter’s morale high. AAP getting the status of a national party is thus being touted as a huge success by party-friendly media.
Such creation of false narratives becomes an integral part of your survival strategy when you have done little to fulfill the common citizen’s aspirations. The Congress adopted and mastered this strategy since Independence. They built a media ecosystem, the Lutyens, which thrust party favorable narratives onto the common citizens. The Lutyens in turn were rewarded with highest civilian Padma awards and unmerited perks. Today, the AAP with its advertising blitzkrieg is adopting the same strategy. Party-friendly media is busy building narratives which position AAP as a winnable alternative to the BJP, over the rest of the opposition.
Hype through Advertisements:
The AAP spends massively on advertisements. The Delhi government’s spending on advertisements increased by 4,273% over 10 years. Getting favorable media coverage as quid pro quo is thus a logical conclusion.
While the total expenditure of the Delhi government on advertisement and publicity was Rs 11.18 crore in 2012-13, it rose to Rs 488.97 crores by 2021-22. In spite of the Covid-19 pandemic, in 2020-21, the spending on advertisements reached a new high of Rs 293.20 crore.
Reports suggest that in 8 years the AAP government spent Rs 1305.04 crore on advertisements. An RTI revealed that the AAP government spent Rs 57 crore on publicity for campaigns against pollution but the government failed to provide any data on how much money was spent to actually fight and control pollution.
The Delhi government had spent Rs 68 lakh across 2020-22 on spraying bio-decomposer. During the same time period, the Kejriwal government spent a whopping Rs 23 crore on advertising the project. The AAP spent 30 times more money on advertisements about the bio-decomposer scheme than the actual scheme itself.
Delhi Higher Education and Skill Development Guarantee Scheme provides students with loans up to Rs 10 lakh. Just 2 students were provided loans but Rs 19 crore were spent on advertising.
Immediately after coming to power in Punjab, the AAP government in Punjab spent Rs 37.36 crore in 2 months on advertisements mainly aimed at poll-bound Gujarat. Arvind Kejriwal claimed the AAP eliminated corruption within 10 days of coming to power in Punjab, that too by just starting a helpline number. He went on to spend more than Rs 20 crore on advertising this.
On an average, in the past 3 years, the AAP government has spent a whopping Rs 90 lakhs a day on advertising itself at the cost of taxpayer’s money. Compare this with the Modi government and you’ll see a reduction in the expenditure on advertisements. FY20 saw a 35% decline in the expenditure; FY21 saw 40.3% decline and FY22 saw an additional 23.28% decline.
The issue of high spending on advertisements by the AAP government was also flagged by CAG. The CAG in its report also stated that it faced difficulties in accessing government files for conducting an audit. It said while records of all 225 creative advertisements released by four selected departments for the audit during 2016-18 were requisitioned by it, those of only 76 advertisements (34%) were produced.
For a leader who hyped austerity as AAPians commandment, Kejriwal is the master of spin, advertising himself to glory at taxpayers’ expense.
Electoral Failures:
Bluff and bluster continue to characterize Kejriwal, who openly claims to be a strong contender against Narendra Modi for power at the Centre.
At the height of the 2014 General Election campaign, Kejriwal fanboys in the media created a myth that Kejriwal was an indomitable crusader headed for an emphatic win over Narendra Modi. Narendra Modi won by a massive margin of 3.37 lakh votes.
During Gujarat Assembly elections 2022, Kejriwal claimed that there was a huge craze for AAP. He advertised videos of rickshaw-walas voluntarily inviting him for dinners at their modest homes to emphasize this craze. The videos were later found to be scripted. In the end, the AAP which claimed it would topple Modi’s bastion in Gujarat had to contend with 5 seats. It lost its deposit in 128 out of 180 seats. That is 71% of its candidates.
In Himachal Pradesh, AAP lost all the seats it contested. All 67 of its candidates lost their deposits. That’s 100% of its candidates. In 25 of 67 seats, they registered lesser votes than NOTA.
Earlier, in Uttar Pradesh, the party lost its deposit on all 349 seats it contested. On 306 of 349 seats, it secured votes less than NOTA. In Uttarakhand it lost deposit on 68 out of the 70 seats it contested and in Goa it lost deposits on 35 of 39 seats it contested.
An MCD sweep would have been a face-saver but the AAP barely scraped past the halfway mark, took a hit on their vote-share, and has been unable to dent the BJP. This came at a time when the BJP has failed to nurse a credible face for its Delhi unit for the past two decades and when the Congress literally gave away its entire vote-base to the AAP on a platter. In spite of this, the party which claimed to sweep the MCD polls with over 200 seats, managed to secure only 134 out of 250 seats, just 8 more than the halfway mark.
The difference of vote-share between AAP and BJP is just around 3%. The BJP, against all odds increased its vote share by around 4%. On the other hand, compared to the 2020 Delhi Assembly elections, AAP’s vote share was reduced by around 12%. Manish Sisodia managed to win only 1 of 4 wards from his assembly constituency; Amantullah Khan won 1 of 5 and Atishi Marlena, Saurabh Bharadwaj, Kailash Gahlot and Satyendra Jain couldn’t even win a single ward.
Conclusion:
The drubbing AAP has received in Gujarat as well as the performance that trailed expectations in the MCD polls make AAP much less of a contender to reckon with. Like other regional parties, Kejriwal has identified leadership vacuum in the opposition against Modi, and wants to present himself as a national level contender for power in 2024, but there is a limit to which false narratives can take you.
AAP style of politics thrives on confrontation with the BJP and whimsical campaign outbursts against Modi. The tone of his election campaigns emphasizes his exaggerated sense of self-importance. It is this pomposity that forces Kejriwal to embrace the incessant publicity blitz as if his entire career depended on it. Unfortunately for the nation, he is not wrong because more than performance, self-publicity sustains his politics. If this publicity and propaganda is not restricted in time, Kejriwal’s addiction to drama and narcissism will empty the taxpayer pockets and ruin the states he rules in.
Tags: Aam Aadmi Party
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