Mango Politics

"Who are these people who won? 

Rakhi Birla, a small time woman journalist, whom no one knows, defeated the cabinet minister Rajkumar Chauhan, 

Ashok Chauhan, whom no one know either, defeated Chaudhary Prem Singh, who has been winning for the last 40 years,

and I defeated Sheila Dikshit by a margin of 25000 votes,

Who are we? 

We are common people, we can't stand against them in any way,

But, these vote margins aren't our victory, they show the anger of people against the corrupt system," (translated from hindi to english)

says AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal in his first interview after the sensational Delhi Assembly Elections, 2013.

The historical white gandhian caps of freedom movement were back in politics, hardly a year back. They even called it as the second freedom movement, but against corruption and misgovernance, this time. The aam aadmi of the Aam Aadmi Party are all set to put their first steps into the Delhi assembly in an unprecedented manner, wiping out the Congress and keeping the BJP at a safe enough distance from getting the simple majority. How did it happen? What made the people of Delhi trust the AAP more than BJP?

One can observe that the dynamic chief of AAP, Arvind Kejriwal, his past and his unminced words, impressed upon the different sections of the people of Delhi. He and AAP never left any stone unturned to expose the similarities between BJP and Congress, when it comes to corruption. Especially, the fact that both the youth and the old from various parts of the country and NRIs from various other countries, donated their time and money, put their careers on hold, shows, how desperate they were for a change in the existing political system. 

They became volunteers, went door to door and covered most of Delhi in teams as part of the AAP campaign, sharing their genuine concerns with the voters of Delhi. Also with the youth came some innovative and economic ways of reaching out to people. They held posters manually on flyovers for hours daily. The supporters who can't reach Delhi were asked to call people of Delhi, or reach out to people on Delhi bound trains.

The genuineness is amazing thing. The people who had been disgusted with dispassionate speeches, promises and apathy of the existing politicians have found solace in the genuineness of the AAP leaders, candidates and volunteers. This leaves not only the Congress, but also the BJP with a need to re-examine their strategies for the General Elections, 2014.

There is still uncertainty over who'll form the government in Delhi, with BJP, restraining themselves from trying out any gimmicks, eyeing the General Elections, and AAP sticking to its stand of not aligning with any of the traditional parties. Meanwhile, AAP is conducting classes to its brand new MLAs on how to dispense their duties.