The question naturally being asked is: Will Kejriwal and his AAP phenomenon endure? Or will they be just a passing glory that will implode under the weight of its own contradictions and expectations?
There are historical lessons on the fate of many such radical movements that are built around an issue but lack an identified ideological direction. One such was the Poujadisme movement in France in the 1950s, named after an unpretentious man named Pierre Poujade who shook the establishment by organising a local shopkeepers' strike to protest high taxation - just as Kejriwal did to protest high electricity bills - and the prospective visit of government revenue collectors.
Expanding his activities to other towns in southern France very rapidly, especially among the working class and the poor, he enrolled 800,000 members in his Union de Défense des Commerçants et des Artisans (Union for the Defense of Tradesmen and Artisans). His support came predominantly from discontented peasants and small merchants. The main themes of Poujadisme were articulated around the defence of the common man against the elite. Verily, it was France's Aam Admi party that captured the imagination of the French struggling class against the bourgeoisie.
Before he became an activist-politician, Poujade was an establishment man - very much like Kejriwal who was a revenue officer - and had served in both the French army and the Royal Air Force in Britain, where he fled during World War II for a few years. In addition to the protest against income tax and price control, Poujadism was opposed to industrialization, urbanization, and American-style modernization (shades of Kejriwal who opposes WalMart-style foreign investment in retail), which were perceived as a threat to the identity of rural France.
The peak of Poujadisme occurred during the elections of January 1956, when Poujadiste candidates won 52 of 595 Assembly seats. Thereafter, his influence waned rapidly, in the absence of an ideological glue, and his candidates won no seats in the elections of November 1958. Though Poujadisme has faded in France, his name has come to be associated with any revolt by the marginalised in a capitalist economy and is often used pejoratively to characterize any kind of ideology that declares itself anti-establishment but lacks a clear goal.
