AAP’s success is based on unique model, but can it be applied nationally?

They said they wanted to change the system. They have at least shaken it up to begin with. They are saying they are looking beyond Delhi. And India is taking them seriously.

The 28 seats won by Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the national capital have the potential to question some long-held assumptions of Indian politics, political pundits say. And AAP itself is considering nationwide poll participation in 2014. “We are ready to step out of Delhi,” says Pankaj Gupta, national secretary, AAP.

“We have restored the common man’s faith in politics,” says Yogendra Yadav, psephologist-turned-AAP leader. The party, political observers and pundits say, managed its stunning debut thanks to switching from candidate-focused politics to participative politics. “Their thousands of volunteers did it,” says Zoya Hasan, professor, political science, JNU.

AAP focused on Delhi’s 70 constituencies, making a manifesto for each of them. It campaigned through auto rickshaw posters and small groups doing extensive voter contacts. It did not hold a big, headline-grabbing rally – but did the groundwork quietly and efficiently.

And it stayed on the message that it was a party of probity and therefore a potential for change against corruption. AAP leaders insisted throughout the campaign that their election budget was just `20 crore. It withdrew a candidate who had failed to declare there were police cases against him.

“AAP seems like a social movement,” says sociologist Shiv Vishwanathan. That leads to the next big question – can the same model sustain itself when it goes national? After its Delhi showing, no one’s going to write off AAP again.

But, as Vishwanathan says, “AAP’s got a lot of answers to come up with…on governance issues.” Hasan says AAP will need to have clear views on big national problems. “Anticorruption by itself is not enough of a platform,” she says. Then, there’s the question of funding a national poll effort and replicating the Delhi model of campaigns. AAP leaders say the party’s political affairs committee will strategise on all relevant issues.

Members of that committee have a tough job. But they have one guarantee – after Delhi elections, India’s oldstyle political parties are going to give them a measure of respect.