New Delhi: Financial scams — chit funds, Ponzi schemes — have victims who lose their savings, but when a political movement built on honesty and hope begins to crumble, the loss is far deeper. Because what is taken away is not just wealth, but trust in the very idea of change.
Politics, at its best, is supposed to be different. It is not meant to serve. That is why the rise of the India Against Corruption movement in 2011 felt like a turning point. The country was weary. The UPA-2 government was battling one corruption scandal after another, and public anger had been building for years. Right into that moment stepped Anna Hazare — quiet, austere, and invoking a language of protest that people understood.
What followed was not just another agitation. It became a national moment. Streets filled up, social media carried the message further, and for once, the middle class — often accused of staying on the sidelines — showed up in large numbers. The movement felt organic. It was less about ideology and more about a shared frustration.
Around Hazare gathered a group that gave the movement direction — Arvind Kejriwal, Kiran Bedi, Prashant Bhushan, Yogendra Yadav, Kumar Vishwas, and others. Hazare’s 12-day fast forced the government to respond, and for a brief stretch, it felt as if something real might come out of it. There was, in that moment, a sense of possibility that is rare in public life.
The shift, however, came when the movement entered politics. Hazare was not convinced — he believed its strength lay in staying outside the system. But Kejriwal took a different call. In 2012, the Aam Aadmi Party was formed, carrying forward the language of the movement into the electoral arena.
The appeal was immediate. A party of the “common man”, promising clean governance and accessibility, struck a chord across sections. The broom became more than a symbol — it became a shorthand for expectation. And then came the results.
After a brief 49-day government, AAP returned in 2015 with a mandate that was almost absolute — 67 out of 70 seats in Delhi. It was the kind of victory that leaves little space for doubt. Congress disappeared from the map, the BJP was reduced to three, and Kejriwal took office with enormous goodwill.
For many, this felt like validation — that politics could still surprise, that change was not just a slogan.
But this is also where the story begins to turn. Differences within the party started surfacing. Leaders who had been central to the movement began raising concerns — about how decisions were being made, about the space for disagreement. Yogendra Yadav and Prashant Bhushan were among the first to be pushed out after questioning the leadership. They spoke openly about the party drifting away from its original ideals.
They were not the last. Over time, familiar faces kept dropping off — Kumar Vishwas, Shazia Ilmi, Kapil Mishra, Ashutosh, among others. The reasons differed, but the pattern did not. The party began to look less like a collective and more like a tightly held structure under one person, where dissent appeared to have little room.
But, it did not succumb; electorally, it held its ground. In 2020, AAP returned to power in Delhi with another strong mandate. With this electoral confidence, in 2022, it expanded into Punjab with a sweeping victory and formed a government under Bhagwant Mann. The party even began testing the waters in other states, such as Goa and Gujarat.
From the outside, it still looked like a success story. But the questions were getting harder to ignore.
Allegations — political, legal, administrative — started piling up. The party’s handling of difficult moments — including ministers/leaders getting entangled in various criminal cases, the 2020 Delhi riots and the Covid crisis — was questioned. Then came the excise policy case, bringing Kejriwal and senior leaders like Manish Sisodia into major legal trouble. Both were arrested and jailed.
For a party that had built itself on moral clarity, this was damaging in a way that went beyond politics.
The image began to shift. The distance between what was promised and what was being seen grew wider. Even issues like the controversy around official residences fed into that perception.
And then came the setback that made it impossible to ignore. It could not win any of the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi. Also, the 2025 Delhi elections did not go the way the party had expected. A party that once seemed unshakeable in the national capital lost ground.
People who overwhelmingly repeatedly voted for Kejriwal expressed their anger by booing him out of the New Delhi Assembly seat — which had been his stronghold since the last three elections.
For Kejriwal, it was not just an electoral loss — it was a signal. Public trust, once dented, does not quietly return and should not be taken for granted.
Since then, more cracks have shown. Leaders have left. Some have spoken. Others have simply walked away. What was once projected as a shared movement now appears fragile. AAP was not meant to be just another political party. It was a belief that politics could be cleaner, more accountable, transparent, and less cynical.
People did not just vote for it; they invested in it. And that is why the disillusionment feels personal.
When a financial scam collapses, people lose money. When a political promise collapses, they lose faith. And faith, once shaken, does not return easily.
The story is still unfolding. Politics rarely ends neatly, and comebacks are always possible. But for those who once stood in protest grounds, believing they were part of something different, the question has not really gone away.
Not loudly, not dramatically — but quietly, and persistently: Was it a movement that lost its way? Or was it something else all along that aam aadami could not comprehend initially?
(Deepika Bhan can be contacted at deepika.b@ians.in)
(IANS)
