The timing of this article in not fair to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), especially since they have recently become active, in some areas of South Goa in enrolling Goans as members into their party, through their membership drives. But when a party which showed so much promise, starts behaving like any other run-off-the-mill party, it becomes necessary they be pulled up and politely reminded of its potential, which truly lies in being different, stick to its core values and that was fighting corruption. Only then will they be able to perform to their potential in bringing about a complete change in the system.
The more AAP copies tactics used by other parties, the more it will lose its relevance and eventually end up being a regional player, which India has no dearth of. One of the tactics they have copied is enrolling Goans to be part of their party through their membership drives. Honestly, should Goans even sign up for memberships of political parties of AAP or for that matter any other party if they have no political aspirations. If an individual gets himself enrolled into a political party, does it not limit his or her choice on who to elect next time elections are called? Political parties to be on the safe side, will always want voters to be committed to their party, hence the membership drives. However, citizens should resist the temptation, as it invariably clouts their judgment, by being biased and start justifying even their wrong decisions.
Political membership drives are similar to loyalty programs a commercial company indulges into, as part of its marketing exercise to promote their products. Buy something today and get a discount on your next purchase, provided you sign up their loyalty program membership. That way companies make sure that the customer stays loyal to them, unless he decides to forfeit the carried forward discount. However, the customer usually wins in these loyalty programs because he could also sign up with a competition company’s loyalty program and be able to compare and get the best deal. Unfortunately that is not the case in political party memberships, because you can be a member of only one political party at any given time, with the option to switch parties, which is really not worth the effort. The situation is worse in Goa, since we have many Goans unofficially attached to an individual politician, no matter where that politician leads them to or changes parties on a whim.
Instead of joining political parties, if Goans could only think of themselves as the boss and the election of a politician a process similar to selecting an employee, to serve their interests, things would have been different. Have you ever seen an employer becoming a part of the employee labor union, and yet the political membership drives do precisely that, coaxes you to become part of their team. Once in the party, you are unable to review their performance fairly, let alone criticize them. Politicians are evolving faster than we think, they have sensed that Goans have slowly become assertive and demanding as was demonstrated in the last assembly elections, hence will do all in their means to form groups though these membership drives so as to corner their loyalty. Some politicians unattached to any party will spend money and send greeting cards or install large cutouts of themselves wishing people during festival season, unofficially wanting voters to be attached to them. Are these gimmicks even legal? By the way, larger the political cutouts in public places the more politically backward Goans look optically, because it implies our system has not evolved and is still individual centric.
There is another drawback of becoming members of political parties. Political parties when they come to power usually become slaves of bureaucratic protocol, fall in the rut and then enter into a comfort zone, thereby diluting or overlooking their core values. Imagine someone impulsively joined the AAP at the height of their anti corruption crusade from the Anna Hazare movement, by now might be a disillusioned man, since they have almost shelved the corruption issue in the backburner and will go after corruption only as a tit-for-tat response mechanism. In fact these days the way they harp on the even-odd scheme in Delhi the party appears more like Greenpeace. Fine, pollution issue was urgent but Arvind Kejriwal should learn to delegate people down the line, so that somebody else runs that campaign, while he sticks to his party core values, that off fighting corruption, at least for the sake of its party members.
Meantime here is some food for thought for AAP Goa, agreed they need members to fight the election campaign, but just increasing the members base will never guarantee an election victory. From now on till elections their campaign should solely focus on educating the Goans on the types of corruption that has taken place so far. Winning elections in Goa is all about giving away a fraction of a percentage of their ill gotten wealth to strategic people who then create a fallacious image of politicians. If AAP only manages to decipher their true deeds and render their real image that should get them real votes. In alphabetical order AAP is the A-Team but to be the real A-Team they should stop aping the B-Team and the C-Team.
(Plastino D’Costa is a business consultant)
