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Opportunism has become commonplace in Indian politics today. And we, the political public have learnt to shrug our shoulders and accept it, not as a corruption of politics or as betrayal but as a constitutive feature of politics. Arguably when most of us read of Raghav Chadha and six others leaving the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and joining the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), we must have lapsed into a moment of cynicism.  After all Punjab elections are around the corner and the AAP should be readied for defeat.  Are these defections a calamity? Perhaps yes, perhaps not.

The once outspoken Raghav, and all these members of the Rajya Sabha who have sat in the house of the elders for many years as representatives of a crisis ridden, Punjab, have done nothing about the predicament of the people of the state. Two among those who have sat in the august Rajya Sabha as representatives of Punjab are amongst the richest Punjabis if not the richest Indians.

They must possess the gift of making money. Why haven’t they deployed this gift for the interest of the constituency they represented while they were in power? They have now completely rejected any responsibility for the beleaguered state by joining a party that has little idea of what equality is, let alone what redistributive justice, or freedom for all from the exigencies of daily life means.

More relevantly the exit, the latest among many others, throws a deep shadow on the AAP, which at one point brought down the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government by articulating loudly amplified charges of corruption.  India Against Corruption became their identity, their mantra and their rationale for making an entrance into the political arena. AAP presented itself as a post-ideological........

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