Written by Praveen Rai

The defeat of AAP in the Delhi assembly elections has led to conversations about the party’s future. The foundation of AAP in 2012 was politically remarkable as it marked the entry of the common man into the electoral arena, the triumph of subalternism and an alternative template of mainstream politicking. Post-colonial India witnessed several formulations of alternative paradigms of politics with deeper democratisation but failed due to misguided utopianism, political inexperience and governance crisis.

As a result, such parties were assimilated into conventional politics or vanished into political oblivion. AAP’s novel governance model, which is based on universal welfarism and redistribution of state wealth, was tangentially different from earlier editions. AAP emerged from a mass movement, “India Against Corruption” (IAC), that peacefully agitated for the passage of the Lokpal Bill (ombudsman) in Parliament to end corruption in public life. It pursued the goal of “Swarajya” (governance by people) based on bottom-to-top party organisation and scripted a non-clichéd grammar and syntax of democratic politics. The back-to-back assembly election victories of AAP in Delhi in 2013, 2015 and 2020 and Punjab in 2022 with humongous mandates marked its electoral ascendancy and advent as a viable national........

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