Ever since the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was elected to rule Delhi, the word 'alternate politics' has become the new buzzword on social media. While alternate politics is familiar to political scientists, it is new to the lexicon of the hoi polloi who actually elect their representatives. So how is 'alternate politics' different from mainstream politics?

I listened with rapt attention to the AAP think-tank leader Yogendra Yadav when he spoke on the topic of 'alternate politics' at a lecture he delivered in Calcutta.

Yadav said when politics in the country goes woefully wrong - in that the electorate is provided with fewer and fewer choices - it is the political scientists of this country who should be held to blame for not providing an alternative framework for doing politics differently. For too long the voter has elected the lesser evil because the best is not available. This is what Yadav calls 'dead end politics'.

As voters we are faced with this dilemma times without number. Voters pressing the 'None of the Above' (NOTA) button on the electronic voting machine (EVM) have gone up, but the Election Commission has not provided us a choice beyond that. It has not spelt out the alternatives for those who vote NOTA. We still follow the first-past-the-post system where the candidate securing the highest number of votes is declared elected. The NOTA button on the EVM therefore is hardly an alternative to the disillusioned voter. As a result, many people today don't want to waste their time voting someone they don't want to see as their representative.

Negative forces

Alternative politics, therefore, means changing the way we in India do politics. We have had heated debates on the issue of criminals being given party tickets to contest elections even from jail.

This is possible because our justice system is fraught with delays and because a person is innocent until proven guilty. That the judiciary is painfully slow to decide cases relating to political criminals indicates clearly that this pillar of democracy requires a major shake-up. But unless the political system itself goes through some momentous metamorphosis, all other institutions created within the framework of our Constitution will wither away instead of becoming robust. One is still unable to understand how the likes of Pappu Yadav, a person known for his acts of commission in Bihar, continues to be elected. It would, in fact, be interesting to know why people would vote someone who serves prison time and can hardly visit his constituency. Why do people like Yadav wield such clout? This criminalisation of politics is what has turned the electorate cynical. And this is where alternate politics can bring change.

But we don't have to look as far as Bihar to see the ascendancy of negative forces in politics. Today all political parties claim as their prime agenda, a corruption-free government, yet have in their fold businessmen who have looted the system to the hilt and built personal empires from the sweat and tears of the common man. People in large swathes of this country continue to languish in poverty.

Sharad Pawar of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) is known to have subverted the system to build his kingdom as a sugar baron. For decades money has been invested in irrigation projects in Maharashtra amounting to thousands of crores of rupees without the poor farmers benefiting from those. Naturally, we hear of farmers' suicides from these depressed regions of Maharashtra but beyond the newspaper reports no salutary action is taken.

Prior to coming to power at the Centre, the BJP promised clean and responsive governance to the voters. And people actually believed Modi and voted overwhelmingly for the BJP. But Modi the vote-winner is now talking differently after becoming Modi the Prime Minister. His sharing a platform with Pawar recently just shows us that mainstream politics will continually get itself into a tight corner where the actors have to make compromises at great cost to the electorate.

Genuine change

Let us look at the BJP in the northeastern states. In Assam, the BJP has become the only alternative to the Congress and the AGP. The electorate is so disillusioned by a non-performing state government and a paralysed UPA government at the Centre that they polarised around the BJP in the last Lok Sabha polls. Both the Congress and the AGP suffer from credibility crises. The kind of 'alternate politics' that the AAP could have provided had not taken shape then.

The image of AAP had in fact taken a severe beating after Kejriwal and his team demonstrated anarchic tendencies even while they had formed a government with the help of other parties then. Today the scene has changed. The AAP resurgence in Delhi has given the electorate here a new hope that a different kind of politics is possible. A kind of politics where the money coming into the party's coffers have a paper trail so that the source is not obscure and shady.

Yogendra Yadav said 'alternate politics' is not to be misconstrued as the 'alternatives to politics' or simply as 'political alternatives'. Anna Hazare's #movement, he said, is an 'alternative to politics'. It is a movement against a particular kind of politics where the standard talk is, ' sab neta chor hain' (all politicians are thieves) so let us get rid of politics. This, Yadav said, is worrying for it amounts to dismantling of democracy. Politics is the way to work and transform democracies, he said. But 'political alternative' is getting rid of one party and voting another. This is simply an oscillation within different political parties. It is alternative politics which can bring genuine political change. Yadav is clear that alternative politics is not minimalist in its demand for a corruption-free regime or bringing down the lal batti (VIP) culture, but one which would also promote a culture that allows the common person to have his/her say in politics.

Social activism

The AAP is an experiment in alternate politics and its hope lies in the dozens of young professionals who have invested in the #party. Currently AAP has about one lakh volunteers across the country. 'Alternate politics' is about setting the agenda for mainstream political parties to take up issues that are crucial to the environment and to the very idea of human survival itself. 'Alternate politics' believes that social activism, NGO movements, et al can transform into political movements.

But while we all agree on the need for alternate politics, it is still an experiment.

The recent national executive meeting of the AAP saw both Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan ousted from the parliamentary affairs committee and the AAP Lokpal, Admiral Ramdass, expressing disenchantment about the concentration of powers around Arvind Kejriwal. So while AAP has won Delhi, the party still has a lot of configuration to do to emerge as the alternative to the entrenched politics of the Congress that this country has accepted for over 60 years.

People are watching the AAP with great interest for it promises to take the common person on board as a major stakeholder. But the recent shenanigans in the national executive of the #party would warrant a cautious approach for all those who desire to usher in the politics of change.

(The writer can be contacted at patricia17@rediffmail.com)