AFTER the Indian National Congress morphed from being a national movement into a political party, several civil society movements have tried to make this transition. The most prominent among them being the Dravidar Kazhagam (DK), led by Periyar, that evolved into more than one political party. In the 1980s the leadership of the students’ movement in Assam moved from street protest to state governance. The All Assam Students Union (AASU) and various other offshoots of the students’ movement emerged and withered as political parties. The agitation for a separate state of Telangana led to the creation of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) that was in office for a decade.
None of them came out of a movement stirred by the urge to fight and root out corruption in public life and ensure good governance in the way that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) came into being. Coming together as India Against Corruption (IAC), exposing misrule during the second term of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, a motley group of individuals inspired hundreds of young idealists who had grown tired of what they viewed as a ‘paralyzed government’, to form a political party that eventually grabbed power. Like so many popular civil society movements that made the transition from the street to government, AAP too found itself fighting elections and forming a government.
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