Many honest individuals in India, after realising the limitations of trying to change the corrupt world of politics from outside, decide to join politics themselves. Thereafter, when they contest elections and fail to get elected, some of them become even more bitter and disillusioned about the ability of clean persons to change a dirty system.

Others form political parties with varying degrees of success or failure.
Will the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), spearheaded by Arvind Kejriwal, Prashant Bhushan and a substantial section of the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement, have any impact on the quality of politics in the country or is it destined to fade into insignificance in the not-too-distant future? Will the new party merely end up playing spoiler to a few candidates belonging to the Congress and the BJP, the two largest political parties in the country?
Whereas time alone will provide answers to the questions raised, the issue of whether or not the AAP will fade into the background after a burst of high-profile activities will depend on a variety of considerations. Should the likes of Mr Kejriwal or Mr Bhushan be compared to, say, a motley group of honest people like Arun Bhatia, Meera Sanyal, N. Jayaprakash Narayan and A.K. Roy, each of whom tried in their own way to change a dishonest and venal polity?
Mr Bhatia retired from the Indian Administrative Service after earning a reputation of being a fighter against corruption in the various posts he had held, including that of commissioner of the Pune Municipal Corporation. In 2004 Lok Sabha elections, Suresh Kalmadi won from Pune by bagging over 3,73,000 votes and Mr Bhatia came third as an independent candidate after obtaining more than 60,000 votes. Ms Sanyal, who has worked as a senior executive with well-known multinational banks, also contested unsuccessfully as an independent candidate from the Mumbai South parliamentary constituency in 2009. She heads a non-government organisation, the Indian Liberal Group, which aims at improving the quality of governance in the country.
In the absence of support from an established political party despite their “clean” credentials, both Mr Bhatia and Ms Sanyal could not convince enough voters to support them. Should one presume that many voters thought they would “waste” their vote if they supported candidates like them? Did they simply lack the funds to publicise themselves? Did they fail to connect with the proverbial unwashed masses? Or was their electoral defeat a combination of all these considerations?
Unlike them, N. Jayaprakash Narayan set up a political party — the Lok Satta Party — after leaving the IAS. He is currently a member of the legislative Assembly of Andhra Pradesh. However, his attempts at reforming the electoral system have met with limited success, and his party has not been able to significantly expand its footprint beyond the state.
Trade union leader A.K. Roy broke away from the Communist Party of India (Marxist), formed the Marxist Coordination Committee, and mobilised workers against the infamous coal mafia in Dhanbad, Jharkhand. An engineer who quit his job with a public sector fertiliser company almost four and a half decades ago, he served thrice as a member of the legislative Assembly and was elected member of Parliament on three occasions. In the ’80s, he was the lone voice who opposed a bill to increase his own salary and perquisites. He subsequently lost the elections he contested and is now elderly and ailing.
The common characteristic of the four individuals named is that all of them have been only partially successful in their endeavour to change Indian politics. This does not mean that their efforts are to be demeaned. On the contrary, their attempts to change corrupt systems need to be lauded. Still, the question remains as to the extent to which the AAP can hope to be different from earlier efforts by individuals and small political parties to make a difference to Indian politics. Will the initial public and media response to the AAP prove ephemeral? More importantly, can civil society activists-turned-politicians succeed in making even a small dent in the corrupt nexus between business, crime and politics?
In at least two respects, the AAP/IAC realised the limitations of their earlier position and changed course quickly. The first was the obvious contradiction of a “people’s movement” seeking to curb corruption in high places — an intensely political issue — remaining avowedly apolitical.
The second limitation was the excessive focus on a single issue, that is, the formation of a Lokpal or people’s ombudsman. It was clear that the party and the movement would have to engage with a host of social, economic and political issues, which is now slowly happening — although many issues, for instance, those relating to foreign policy, are yet to be articulated.
Why have past attempts by academics, activists and prominent citizens at forming parties and contesting elections had negligible impact on the working of the Indian polity so far?
Many of these attempts were probably doomed to fail, because such candidates, despite their obvious integrity and professional credentials, sought no help from — or did not bother to build alliances with — existing candidates or political parties, even on specific issues. Will the IAC/AAP make the same mistake and pander to middle-class populism by tarring all politicians and political parties with the same brush?
What may work in favour of the new party is the fragmentation of the country’s polity. Even though this process appeared to have stalled between 2004 and 2009, India has not moved, by and large, to a two-coalition system at the level of the Union, one grouping led by the Congress and the other by the BJP. Without their allies and coalition partners, the vote share of the two “national parties” was less than half in the last five general elections that have taken place since 1996. The AAP should search specific candidates with a reputation for probity and support them. Will it?

The writer is an educator and commentator