The recent performance of the Aam Aadmi Party of India (AAP) in the Delhi legislative (state) election and its founder Mr. Arvind Kejriwal’s assumption of power as Delhi’s Chief Minister is a transformational development in Indian politics and, potentially, world politics.
I can’t help viewing the AAP as a disruptive innovation. A disruptive innovation has its own unique feature that doesn’t initially serve the main-stream market, and is initially inferior to the incumbent technology in the feature that serves the main-stream market. Such a disruptive innovation often rapidly improves in the main-stream feature subsequently and when it ultimately catches up with the incumbent technology in that feature, it disrupts and often displaces the incumbent technology because it is now not only on par with the incumbent technology in the main-stream feature but it also has its own unique feature that the incumbent technology lacks.
A simple example is laptop technology which disrupted desktop technology. Laptop’s portability was not the feature that was valued the most by consumers-at-large initially who really wanted processing power (and affordability)—in which laptop lagged desktop. When laptop technology improved and matched desktop technology in processing power (and in affordability), it disrupted desktop technology since desktops continued to be bulky. See here for more on disruptive innovation.
The Aam Aadmi party was founded on the manifesto of eradication of corruption in Indian politics (the feature which the main-stream parties lacked) but was weak relative to the main-stream parties in terms of financial resource and voter support—the main-stream features—that are necessary to contest and win elections and displace main-stream parties. However the AAP rapidly improved in mobilizing financial resources (by way of donations from the common man—the aam aadmi) and also won sufficiently large voter support in the recent Delhi legislative elections which enabled it to form the Delhi state government (though as a minority party banking on external support). The main-stream parties continue to be corrupt.
Mr. Arvind Kejriwal’s AAP model is a terribly good thing that has happened to India in the recent and short past and, I believe, it could be so for the world-at-large in the years to come.
Mey 