A journey from representative to participatory democracy with Siddharth Sharma
Siddharth Sharma, a journalist by profession has done significant reporting from India and other countries. He has reported from conflict driven countries around the world. After reporting from gulf war, he was travelling to Switzerland. While crossing the Bosnia and Croatia border, Siddharth started thinking about the decentralization of power via participatory democracy. With this dream, he joined the Jan Lokpal movement also known as the India Against Corruption (IAC) movement. He was also a founding member of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP).
Hierarchy and Designation: When asked about his hierarchy and designation in AAP, Siddharth replied that “My name is Siddharth Sharma, I’m the booth agent at booth number 94, Shivaji Nagar Assembly, Bangalore Central Lok Sabha. I’m the boss of the booth and no one can replace me including Arvind Kejriwal”. This is the concept of decentralization of power which AAP is planning to bring. A local need to take charge of their neighbourhood. All of Siddharth’s designations will stay today and be gone tomorrow, but he will stay with AAP as a booth volunteer. He has taken the charge for a better neighbourhood irrespective of AAP as a contestant.
The Movement: IAC movement asked parliament to reduce its power in 2011-12 by demanding Jan Lokpal Bill. Parliament has extraordinary powers but they are not benefiting India as a country and its citizens. During the movement people came together and demanded parliament to form laws to monitor corruption against lawmakers. The parliament came stronger here as well and denied reducing their rights. This is why the country is still waiting for its first Jan Lokpal to be appointed. A movement which flipped the decades old government with a huge loss, created awareness among countrymen, generated many young leaders and activists will be remembered forever. Emergence of AAP was also a result of this movement.
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| Siddharth Sharma during Swaraj movement in 2013 |
Politics and AAP: Either the perception was created to keep good people out of policy making process or it really existed, politics was considered as a bad practice before the movement. The politicians who were initially confident that the people will run away from joining active politics challenged the IAC members to join the politics to bring the laws they wanted. They almost succeeded in keeping activists away from politics until a group of them decided to join. This is when AAP was born. Due to some conflicts, party members kept scattering and now we have more than one political party generated from the movement.
Representative VS Participatory Democracy: AAP believes that the democracy doesn't improve if it is not participatory in nature. A representative democracy is more like a ruler who is neither accountable nor gives rights to their citizen to decide anything on their own. With 67/70 landslide victory in 2015 Delhi assembly elections, AAP came with a plan to implement participatory democracy through Jan Lokpal (passed during the first 49 days of government, still waiting approval from centre) and Mohalla Sabhas. But the resistance from bureaucracy, media and politicians is high and they stopped such policies. These policies allow participatory democracy and make government accountable.
AAP Governance: Given the circumstances and boundaries defined by media and central government, AAP is doing brilliant, even in some cases better than some of the other state governments. AAP legislators learnt from the well written constitution of Delhi as a union territory, and setup new heights in the sectors of Health, Education and economic schemes for Delhi residents. With three years in power, AAP is delivering based on their promises. Health and education reforms are being talked worldwide. Recently Delhi’s Mohalla Clinics got a rare praise from a body setup by the central govt.
Dying AAP: For people who are worried about the survival of AAP as many AAP supporters are leaving the party, should know that joining and leaving an organization is a continuous process. Even not winning a majority in Punjab is not a setback for AAP. The correct metric to decide the success of any political party is the number of elected candidates and for AAP this graph is rising very fast. Have a look at some major achievements of AAP.
1. 2012: Formed a political party
2. 2013: 28 MLA in Delhi
3. 2014: 4 MP from Punjab
4. 2015 67 MLAs in Delhi
5. 2017: 60-70 wins in UP Municipal elections (some independent candidate joined AAP later)
6. 2017: 49 wins in Delhi Municipal elections
7. 2017: 20 MLA from Punjab
AAP in Karnataka: With time, AAP is expanding and establishing units in different parts of India. Now, AAP is fighting on 28 seats in Karnataka Assembly elections (Karnataka voted on May 12). Karnataka played very important role in the establishment of AAP since IAC days. In 2014, AAP contested on all 28 Lok Sabha seats in Karnataka but unfortunately no one was able to win. Support on the ground and from other creative professionals in Karnataka complement each other.
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| Siddharth Sharma during a Jansabha in Rahamat Nagar in 2015 |
Elections in Karnataka: Election is a beast which is always hungry for resources. A balanced use of resources can produce maximum outputs. This is one of the reasons that AAP is contesting only on selected 28 seats. AAP doesn’t finalize the candidates at last moment nor field them based on their personal resources/assets. For a selected number of seats based on resources, only deserving candidates who represent people from their constituency and have significant impact on the society are selected. Everyone who has gone through candidate profiles have appreciated the effort put in selecting those candidates. They have been working on ground for months. In each and every way AAP supports all the candidates. Other parties who decided their candidates at the last moment are pushing star campaigners from different states at a humongous scale.
AAP doesn’t believe in the politics of caste and religion. To counter the communalism and casteism, AAP only fields deserving candidates who are qualified and have done significant work for the community. When there are educated people on field, they will talk on real issues directly related to the public and in the process caste and religion will disappear. While campaigning, people are also educated.
EVM and NOTA: EVM and NOTA are two of the prominent features in today’s democracy. One can be hacked without voters knowledge and the other has no significance. AAP MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj hacked EVM in Delhi Assembly to demonstrate its loopholes but no major decision has been taken by ECI till date other than all-party meets and EVM hackathon. The hackathon organized by ECI had a condition to hack the EVMs without using any external device. But this limitation doesn’t work when someone is able to get EVM access before EVMs are being delivered to ECI or stored in storage. In such circumstances, it can be programmed in a way that voting data can be manipulated. Storage and transportation of EVMs are also major issues. There are so many ways and loopholes that one can easily get EVM access and hack them. With respect to NOTA, as of now if NOTA gets maximum number of votes, candidate securing next highest number of votes is the winner. It will be a game changing decision in Indian politics if re-elections are allowed in NOTA winning constituencies and previous candidates are not allowed to nominate.
The Biggest Lesson: While working with AAP, Siddharth learnt that evolution happen organically and it takes time to evolve. Delhi was a mutant experience for AAP. Growth happens in evolutionary manner. We are faster than any other political party in India. Our enthusiasm, ambition and emotions are so high that if we don’t form a government like we did in Delhi, many of us think that we are lost. Without any corruption charges and mal-governance, we are doing excellent in Delhi. We need to have faith in ourselves and continue supporting for a better India.
The Vehicle: Aam Aadmi Party is a vehicle which is going from source A to destination B. Source A is representative democracy (where we stand today) and destination B is participatory democracy (where the vehicle wants to go). We the volunteers of AAP are not owner of the vehicle. It belongs to the people of India. We have an excellent driver named Arvind Kejriwal. Importantly, vehicle won’t move unless it has gas/fuel in its tank. And we the volunteers are the fuel of this vehicle. When fuel burns, it generates the energy which drives the vehicle towards its destination.
AAP USA chapter organizes a weekly conference call every Sunday at noon 12:00PM EST. More details about the call and the guest can be found at @aapchat (https://twitter.com/aapchat).
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