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'A government whose policies are focused around making the life of ordinary citizens, specially the most deprived sections, richer; a government that prioritises education, health and transport, that doesn't treat its citizens as subjects who must come to it for everything, is rare in our country.'
'When such a government is thrown out, one is left stunned,' notes Jyoti Punwani.
The 2020 Delhi elections were just over; the result was to come. Reacting to my hope that AAP should win again, a cynical Delhi colleague mockingly asked why.
A state government was not required to do the work of a municipality, he said. That's all that AAP, with its lack of ideology, was doing. And even that wasn't new -- the South had seen first class government hospitals and schools years ago, he added.
But what of those who didn't live in the South?
In Mumbai, who willingly sends their child to a municipal school? Enrolment in Mumbai's municipal schools had fallen by 59% between 2010 and 2019, the well-known Praja Foundation had found. The BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation had closed down 257 schools run by it in this period.
In contrast, AAP's government schools had become internationally renowned between 2015 and 2019. By the time its tenure ended last week, students from private schools were taking admission into government schools in Delhi, a reverse migration that wasn't driven by the Covid pandemic alone.
What's more, AAP had made sure private schools didn't raise their fees beyond a certain limit. Perhaps for the first time, parents received refunds from private schools against whom the Delhi government cracked the whip.
In Mumbai meanwhile, even during the pandemic, private schools refused to let students sit for exams if they hadn't paid the fees, despite government 'advisories' to the contrary.
That was the vital difference. Other governments stopped at expressing pious hopes. AAP set aside 21% of the government budget for education, way higher than the national average of 13%. It sent its school teachers to Finland for training.
It showed a similar commitment to the health of its poorest citizens. Like for education, its budget allocation for health too, was, at 12%, more than twice the national average of 5.6%.
Its mohalla clinics became a model for others to follow. Much later, Mumbai saw '1 Rupee clinics', started by one committed doctor outside railway stations.
A 2018 Praja report found that as per National Health Mission norms, Mumbai, the financial capital of the country, a magnet for migrants from Maharashtra and other states, needed 830 dispensaries, but had just 186.
Another report by Citizen Matters found that post-pandemic (2022-2023), the BMC used only 71% of its health budget; and a mere 30% of its allotted budget on health capital expenditure -- upgradation of health facilities. This despite the Covid pandemic exposing the poor state of public health services.
Even as patients were flocking to private hospitals due to lack of medical equipment and staff in public hospitals, last November, the BMC scrapped 1,840 permanent posts that had been lying vacant for three years, including those of doctors.
These posts had been manned by contract employees. The BMC should have filled them up; instead, the municipal commissioner declared that since they hadn't been filled up for three years, they were not needed.
Coming from Mumbai, AAP's focus on government schools and mohalla clinics seemed exactly what a government ought to be doing -- putting the poorest citizen at the centre of its policies.
Despite this higher spending, the AAP government's borrowings (to meet the gap between expenses and income) were the lowest in the country at 0.7%.
It also kept inflation in check. From 2014 to 2024, the general price level in Delhi went up 51%. The national average was 64%.
If a new party, hemmed in by an uncooperative central government could do this, why couldn't other parties who have no such restraints and whose finances are much greater? The BMC is Asia's richest municipal corporation.
For these two reasons alone, the defeat of AAP is a blow against the basic human rights to health and education.
But that's not all that AAP did. Early on in its tenure, AAP made electricity up to 200 units free. In Mumbai, Adani's 2018 takeover of the power sector from Reliance (who replaced the State-run MSEB) in the suburbs has seen power bills soar.
Like the mohalla clinics, another AAP scheme has been adopted by many state governments. When AAP introduced free bus rides for women in 2019, the party was ridiculed. Today five state governments including AAP-run Punjab, have followed suit.
In contrast, in Mumbai, once famous for its public bus service, the BMC-controlled BEST bus service has cut down its bus fleet and hires private contractors to run their buses, despite the number of accidents by private bus drivers.
Then there's the doorstep delivery scheme launched by AAP in 2018, wherein a citizen can get essential official certificates at home without having to go the concerned government office.
Imagine this in Mumbai, where either corruption or endless delays mark one's quest for an official certificate.
A government whose policies are focused around making the life of ordinary citizens, specially the most deprived sections, richer; a government that prioritises education, health and transport, that doesn't treat its citizens as subjects who must come to it for everything, is rare in our country. When such a government is thrown out, one is left stunned.
This is not to whitewash AAP's errors of commission. Though it won the Delhi municipal elections in 2022, its performance was below average.
What was more alarming however, was the change in Kejriwal. His fondness for a personality cult was evident from the start. It only grew larger with the years. That one knew.
What one didn't expect was the transformation of Kejriwal from one who travelled in his Wagon R for his first swearing in to one who travelled with full security (though the number of times he has been physically attacked may warrant some security), followed by extravagant spending on renovating the CM's official residence.
It should be noted that in Mumbai, every time a new CM occupies the official residence, renovations are carried out. But then Kejriwal is held to a higher standard than other politicians.
Though AAP often declared it followed no ideology except working for the aam aadmi, it was still disappointing to see the party's absence from the streets during the 2020 Delhi riots after just having being voted to power again with a huge majority (except for Gopal Rai, who comes from a Marxist background and retained his seat this time too).
That absence could have passed for cowardice, but Kejriwal's statement that he would have cleared Shaheen Bagh in a day; the government's separate categorising of Tableeghi Jamaat Covid cases; its silence while Muslim homes were demolished or Jamia students assaulted; its changing Aurangzeb Road to A P J Abdul Kalam Road; its abandoning its own MLA Tahir Husain because he was accused in the riots, and making its Dalit minister Rajendra Pal Gautam resign after he organised a mass conversion to Buddhism (an annual practice to mark Dr Ambedkar's conversion); and most unforgivable of all, then chief minister Atishi's recent directions not to admit Rohingya children to government schools -- all these were deeply disturbing. As was Kejriwal's lavish display of religiosity through his Diwali pujas in 2020 and 2021.
Yet, these disquieting deeds cannot wipe out the work AAP has done. Not every government school is equally good; not every mohalla has a clinic. But compare what Delhi's poorest have with what others of the same class have in other metros. And they have that despite the four most important persons in government: The CM, and the health and education ministers, as well as its most vocal Rajya Sabha MP, being thrown behind bars since 2022 for periods ranging from two years to six months.
Till 2014, when one party replaced another after an election, nothing changed for the common citizen.
Post-2014 however, wherever the BJP has replaced another party, the change has spelt difficult times for the state's minorities.
Now, for the first time, the change of a state government may mean a decline in the quality of life of the common citizen.
The change in Delhi is also the vindication of the misuse of power by a Centre determined to see its challenger fail, even if that meant depriving citizens of basic rights.
The remarkable thing is that AAP, unlike other parties similarly bullied by the BJP, didn't give in.
Though almost 44% of Delhiites, AAP's core voters, voted for Kejriwal, and AAP lost by a mere 2% difference in vote share, nevertheless his own defeat, and that of his closest aides, feels like the end of hope in a better kind of government; the end of an era when, for the first time in decades, the poor were the government's vote bank, not as 'labarthis' who depended on largesse, but as citizens empowered by State policy.
Feature Presentation: Rajesh Alva/Rediff.com