Prospecting for “Corruption”: Generating Political Value in Contemporary India

This article examines the rise and decline of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the political landscape of Delhi, culminating in its electoral defeat in the 2025 Vidhan Sabha election. Founded in 2012 amid anti-corruption mobilizations, AAP initially distinguished itself as a hybrid between a political party and a social movement, embodying a form of ‘unpolitics’ that drew strength from grassroots activism and moral legitimacy. The study traces the party’s trajectory from its early successes in Delhi and Punjab to its attempts at national expansion, highlighting both its achievements in governance – particularly in education and fiscal reforms – and its gradual departure from its founding ideals. By analysing the interplay between external pressures, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the arrest of senior leaders, and an aggressive electoral campaign by BJP, alongside internal shortcomings in leadership and communication, the article argues that AAP’s transformation into a “conventional” political party eroded its symbolic distinctiveness. The electoral outcomes of 2025 revealed the waning of its ‘unpolitics’ appeal and underscore the fragility of movements rooted in moral capital when confronted with the pragmatic realities of power. While AAP remains relevant in Punjab and may still shape future opposition coalitions, its promise of a paradigm shift in Indian politics appears to have reached an endpoint, marking the closure of an era inaugurated by the India Against Corruption movement.

The present study is an analysis of Dalits’ shifting support base among major political parties in Punjab, namely Congress, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and specifically Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in 2022 Punjab Assembly election. With an established presence in the State, the AAP could present itself as a new alternative. The AAP defeated all the traditional/mainstream political parties in the recent Assembly election to put an end to the deeply entrenched family (SAD-Badal) and dynastic rule (Congress). The present research paper is an effort to find out the causes behind the shifting Dalit support base. The AAP’s success was a clear message from the people of Punjab that they were fed up with the power circle of traditional parties that were in agreement with each other to rule the State by turns. Paper argues that Dalits are likely to vote for the parties that have a chance to come to power as in 2022 Punjab Assembly Election, Dalit support base has widely shifted to AAP. The study was qualitative and conducted in the Doaba region of Punjab. It is an analysis of the interactions with 300 respondents of the targeted SCs population and 30 leaders from the major political parties in Punjab.

In the backdrop of India's rising prominence in BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), understanding of its political environment, electoral competition, and constituent parties with their political ideologies contesting to form government attracts immense interest from the researchers in political science, political marketing, and public policy. Although literatures in political marketing are more than two decades mostly carried out in developed democratic systems like the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, India as a posttransition democracy received relatively less attention. The article has been conceptualized in the context of 2014 Indian general elections Lok Sabha 2014 as an attempt to study application of political marketing principles in a cross‐cultural democracy. The author has probed the emergence of new political party Aam Aadmi Party riding on the success of Janlokpal (civil society movement), the marketing approach used by Aam Aadmi Party, essentially positioning and branding strategies, during the national elections and party institutionalization. Research strategy followed secondary research of published data for examining the new party creation from a marketing perspective.

In this paper, I discuss how a relatively new anti-corruption political party in India—the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)—was able to achieve an unprecedented electoral victory in the 2015 Delhi assembly election, comprehensively defeating the two national parties—the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress Party. Although Delhi is a small Indian state with limited powers, AAP’s victory provides it with a platform to expand in other parts of the country. However, to do so, it will need to deliver effective governance in Delhi, enunciate a clearer ideology and develop credible regional leaders. As things stand now, the AAP could be characterised as a party whose appeal is more likely to be in the urban, media-thick Indian cities and towns than in the rural areas. If this description of the AAP is correct, then its ability to challenge the larger national and regional parties in the near future may be limited.

New Product Development Approach to Political Party Development in India: Study of Aam Aadmi Party

Report on Media Activism and Other Manias: How the English Mass Circulation Indian Press Framed the 2014 Election Campaign

This study investigates how politicians and citizens cooperate to create an e-democracy based on information dissemination and political awareness in an ICT environment, especially during elections. This research is conducted in the Indian context, where new ICT channels, such as Facebook and Twitter, were extensively used for campaigning and citizen engagement prior to elections. We downloaded 98,396 tweets posted by the official Twitter accounts of the top ten political parties during a two month period prior to election and conducted a three-level analysis to identify the overall trend in usage, the interactive characteristics of tweets and the functions driving the Twitter usage of political parties. Our findings show that the more successful parties used Twitter to push timely updates on online and offline campaign activities, to their followers. The exemplary use of Twitter for campaigns was by the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) Twitter account for interacting with the public, and by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) account for self-promotion and highlighting its party manifesto. Further, we identify the new paradigms created by political parties to engage and inform voters, driven on modern ICT. Our study is the first in analyzing Twitter usage by Indian political parties, and its findings corroborate seminal research in other developing countries.

In 2015, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was elected to govern Delhi promising to improve public services, including education through government schools that would be the equal of private-school provision. Media reports, along with the party’s re-election in 2020, suggest strong public confidence that AAP are delivering on that promise. But is this success reflected by experience in schools? Delhi’s Education Revolution offers a critical evaluation of the AAP’s education reforms by exploring policy and practice through the eyes of one key group: the government-school teachers tasked with making the AAP’s pledge a reality. Drawing on 110 research interviews conducted via Zoom during the Covid pandemic in the summer of 2020, teachers explain how the reforms have changed their profession and practice, and whether education really has improved for children of all backgrounds. Analysis of views about critical issues such as inclusion and the pressure of achievement targets in classrooms that often contain more than 50 students, informs their observations about the reform programme itself. The study paints a more qualified picture of success than suggested elsewhere and makes a valuable contribution to the understanding of education reforms in India, and most especially, in Delhi.

Historically, the overlaps between Hinduism and Islam bolstered the narrative that the Muslims were outsiders and culturally inferior to the Hindus and that Hinduism was India’s unifying tradition. The perspective described above still holds sway over many Hindus. As a result, for a large portion of the Hindu population, emphasizing the separateness of a minority group represents a threat to the nation’s integrity. With the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), and Trinamool Congress (TMC), we witness a tussle between two variants of Hindu nativism. The BJP attempts to consolidate the Hindu vote by heightening the differences between Hindus and Muslims and portraying itself as the protector of national integrity. The AAP and the TMC revive a much older form of cultural nativism by downplaying the separateness of the Muslims, indicating that India is already a Hindu nation and that there is no need to persecute religious minorities. Although we examine the AAP, TMC, and Shiv Sena to understand better how regional parties compete with the BJP’s cultural nationalism, our primary goal is to trace the historical roots of the AAP’s cultural posturing.

This decade has marked a rise in social movement-originating political parties, many of which have gained considerable political power and achieved surprising electoral success. In doing so, these parties have challenged traditional definitions and conceptualizations of party institutionalization. One such party is the Aam Aadmi Party in India, formed in the wake of the massively viral 2011 India Against Corruption (IAC) movement. Through interviews and observations, as well as digital artefact analysis, we trace the process of the Aam Aadmi Party’s institutionalization through an analysis of its media and communication practices. We argue that party workers’ drive to institutionalize into a durable electoral force has pushed AAP into projecting contradictory images and embracing conflicting narratives, both online and offline. However, the durability of the party and recent electoral successes point to the ways AAP can nonetheless inform conceptions of institutionalization.

This paper explores the new alternative politics popularised by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) as an antidote to the conventional politics that plague Indian democracy. It locates this politics not in an already constituted framework like other caste-, community- and class-based political parties, but as a performative construct articulated through the symbols of the broom, the muf-fler and the Wagon R. Contrary to the understanding that AAP leaders are fully evolved com-mon men, it is proposed that their commonness was a product of these symbols. These repre-sentational devices are made to resonate among the people through a carefully orchestrated spectacle of de-elitisation. This process involves both disavowal of the elite Self and a kind of reverse mimicry of an irrational other. It is this strategy that successfully converts administra-tors, academics, lawyers, etc. into appearing as one of the common people. The paper argues that the characteristic features of the common man found among AAP leaders are not natural conditions but manifestations of what may be called self-othering.

Since the independence movement in India, beginning in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the country’s political history has been closely linked with media, as this played an active role in mobilizing and unifying the masses against the British. Independent India believed in a democracy and subsequently held elections every five years to elect its quasi-federal government. Today, there are several active, dominant players at the regional or provincial level. That media and politics interlink is shown by the fact that every political party either owns or operates a television channel to propagate its ideology or eulogize its party leaders. Even those belonging to businesses have strong allegiances to a political party. With more than 800 channels operating in India, television has a far reach compared to any other medium of communication. This chapter focuses on the effectiveness of 24-hour news television channels to sway a majority of the electorate and create larger-than-life images of politicians, overpowering reality. Though charges of corruption and nepotism exist, politicians make innovative use of news channels and cultivate a specific picture, having the luxury of time and space on the channels to which they have access, and going on to win elections. This chapter explores the phenomenon of media influence in the context of India with case studies of national and regional/state leaders who utilized television to obfuscate their shortcomings and provide a theatrical experience to win over the electorate.

This article examines the emergence of new political parties in India, focusing on their commitment to intra- party democracy, transparent funding practices, inclusive candidate selection, and issue-based mobilisation strategies. Through a comparative framework, this study evaluates emerging political entities like Swaraj India, the Plurals Party, and Loksatta against established players such as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Indian National Congress (INC), and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Findings indicate that while new parties demonstrate higher adherence to democratic standards, challenges in implementation, funding, and scalability constrain their effectiveness. This study contributes to the discourse on democratic reform, emphasising these new parties’ role in promoting a more participatory and transparent political culture in India.

The welfare state is way of governing in which the state or an established group of social institutions provides basic economic security for its citizens. Modern states have programs that are reflective of a welfare state, such as welfare pensions for vulnerable sections affirmative actions and spending on education, health etc. Tamil Nadu ruled by Dravidian parties, they were one of the best executors of the welfare politics in electoral arena. Tamil Nadu's welfare model is being copied in other states since it gained massive electoral advantages. Political parties have realized that the surest way to reap electoral dividends is through benefits to an individual voter. Nowadays Indian elections are turnout into a programmatic way. Voters are more likely to give credit to the governments for their welfare schemes. This paper tries to analyse the Indian electoral scenario and the influence of welfare politics. The astounding victory of left democratic front (LDF) in the Kerala assembly election and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi can be seen as its scheme of blending governance with developmental welfarism. Apart from the crises such as flood and covid19 the effective operationalization of government gives electoral dividends for these parties. The NDA government has been crafting its flagship programs since 2014, welfare programs such as Ujjwala, Jan-Dhan Yojana are helped to bag the votes and again get power in central

The Aam Aadmi Party promised a corruption-free Punjab but it has not been able to deliver on its campaign promise. Winning government on the back of an anti-corruption platform has proved to be a double-edged sword for the Aam Aadmi Party in India’s Punjab state. The Aam Aadmi Party, literally “Common Man’s Party”, emerged from […]