Would Bangladesh need an Aam Admi Party?

You could call it high populism but Arvind Kejriwal was scoring points by taking the Metro rail on his first day to office as Delhi chief minister. His message was clear – the system of privileges the political class has become so used to must end and the process must start with him. Though it may not be possible for him to take the Metro everyday, not the least because it could make crowd control for his security detail rather difficult. And though Kejriwal says he and his ministers need no security, the police will not take a chance. Even Gandhi, who inspires Kejriwal as much his modern day incarnation Anna Hazare, was killed by a fanatic. Kejriwal leads the Aam Admi Party (Common Man's Party) that emerged out of the anti-corruption movement in Delhi in recent months. The AAP shocked the Congress and the BJP, the front-runners of Indian politics, by returning with the second largest kitty in the Delhi state polls. Now it has formed a government with Congress support but Kejriwal says 'strictly on our terms'. It is not clear if the government will last long because Kejriwal's anti-corruption agenda may provoke the Congress, which may have supported AAP to keep the BJP out of power, to withdraw support. The BJP has alleged there is a secret deal between the AAP and the Congress – an allegation Kejriwal described as unfortunate.

Arvind Kejriwal was born in a decent middle class family. His father was an engineer from a top technical institute, his mother a senior government official. Arvind went to the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) where entry is more difficult than the best in the US. He served in the Indian Revenue Service and several top corporate groups. So if he broke ranks with thousands of middle-class Indians who aspire for a great career and joined the movement against corruption, it was a matter of choice, not compulsion.

That is the message Team Kejriwal sends to the so-called Civil Society in India and its neighbourhood. Don't sit back and criticise the politicians – jump into fray and try to change things. At least make a brave effort. Arvind's conversion of the anti-corruption platform into a Commoners Party with all supporters and leaders wearing the trademark Gandhi cap that Congress has all but given up is history. Vested interests may make Arvind's job to deliver on his promises very difficult. His own populism, emphasis on symbolic gestures, may also backfire. But even Anna Hazare, who opposed Arvind's decision to form a political party, has wished him all the best and said he could make a difference. Some of India's finest minds and socially conscious men and women have teamed up with Kejriwal. Like India's leading election analyst Yogendra Yadav.

Even if the Aam Admi Party fails, it has already succeeded in what it set out to do – shock and awe the political system and the class that runs it. It has raised huge questions on how Indian democracy should function. No party can hereafter take the people for granted. It is the parties like Congress and BJP which are now trying to take a few clues from the AAP.

Can't something like this happen in Bangladesh? The two parties who have controlled the national politics are locked in a Pyrrhic contest, in which the political system will continue to bleed. Leading citizens who are seen to make up the civil society are warning of a 'dangerous third force' coming up to fill the void, perhaps alluding to military intervention. Why can't these social leaders take the charge to change the country and take the plunge into politics a la Kejriwal? Why would some of them wait for an extra-constitutional force to put them in the saddle? Why would they plan to float a political party only if support comes from the cantonment? Even after they have won some of the world's biggest awards! Why can't they face their own people and ask for their support to change and transform the country?

Bangladesh has much going its way except for its fractious, feudal politics. Its economy is looking up, the social indicators are better than ever before.

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen often holds up Bangladesh as a model of distributive justice that he pitches against a purely economic growth driven model. Its working class has sweated it out to create wealth where crony entrepreneurs have failed the nation with endemic corruption. And who backs these crony entrepreneurs? Who else but the politicians! Of all parties. So long as the 'civil society' is part of the privileged system, so long as it belongs to the ruling elite, so long as it remains tied to big business and politics or draws covert support from cantonments or foreign governments thousands of miles away, it will only advocate solutions and consensus within the political system, not try to take it by storm as Kejriwal and his AAP did.

Trouble is something like the AAP can only grow from a movement. The Shahbagh movement promised much but petered out because it had a narrow agenda focused on war criminals only. Bangladesh would sure be a better place without the war criminals and their politics of religious bigotry – but you need more to make a 'Sonar Bangla'.

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Syed Bashir is a bdnews24.com columnist.