The Delhi Model

The run up to the 2014 parliamentary elections marked a tectonic shift in the political narrative in India. Among other things the discussion moved away from ‘doctrines’ to ‘models’. The Gujarat Model of Narendra Modi became the pivot around which the national political discourse gravitated. It was around this time that seeds were being sown of another ‘model’ in the national capital of Delhi. 

The anti-corruption movement spearheaded by Anna Hazare had metamorphosed into a political outfit called Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) under the leadership of Arvind Kejriwal. In 2015 AAP created history by winning as many as 67 out of 70 seats in the Delhi Legislative Assembly. With a people-first vision, the AAP government started work on what later came to be known as the Delhi Model.

The Delhi Model by Jasmine Shah is an insider’s attempt to explain the model, its working and impact. Jasmine Shah is an IITian who also holds a degree in public administration from Columbia University. Shah is an AAP leader and served as the chairperson of the Dialogue and Development Commission in Delhi government and played a vital role in the envisioning and implementing the Delhi Model.

The three principles

At the core of the Delhi Model, explains Shah, are three principles of which the first one is to prioritise investments in building human capabilities and improving the quality of life of the common man. The second principle is the obvious one of declaring a war on corruption while the third principle is about making a commitment to financial prudence. To implement this model reforms were initiated in areas that impacted the common man the most – education, healthcare, water and sanitation, electricity, public transport, air pollution, social welfare and infrastructure. 

The author explains various initiatives taken in each of these areas and in his own self-assessment the results are obviously extremely good. To his credit, Shah, laces his claims with data and comparative charts pitting AAP’s performance against that of the previous governments or Delhi’s performance as against the national averages on various parameters.

Shah picks up each sector and backs his argument with bar-charts and data. On education he makes a case highlighting the improvement in the overall education eco-system by putting forward a significant data point – that of students from Delhi government run schools cracking important national examinations. He cites the data of IIT-JEE which showed a remarkable jump from 50 students from Delhi government schools making the grade in 2014 to 783 in 2024. He points out how 1414 government school students cleared the NEET-UG exams in 2024 compared to 569 in 2024.

Data-based approach

Shah takes a similar data-based approach to highlight the improvement in other sectors such as healthcare, electricity, transport, pollution and more. He highlights the outreach of primary health facilities through Mohalla Clinics as a major achievement of the Delhi Model. On water supply he offers details of the ‘city of lakes’ project that is meant to revive 600 lakes and water bodies in Delhi as a mechanism to improve the water table of Delhi.

Shah is at his combative best when he compares the Delhi Model versus the Gujarat Model. He attributes BJP’s success in winning seven consecutive assembly elections in Gujarat to its political strategy rather than its approach to development. He slots the Gujarat Model to be one that’s based on ‘trickle-down economy’ where the primary role of the state is to facilitate rapid economic growth by promoting big industry at the exclusion of almost everything else including expenditure on human development. 

This, Shah says, led to a jump in the growth rate during the Modi years but simultaneously saw the state of Gujarat underperform when compared to most other Indian states on social indicators. He ridicules it further by citing the launch of ‘Mission Schools for Excellence’ initiative by PM Modi which was done from a class-room built in a studio environment rather than a real classroom of a Gujarat government school.

Perfect timing

The timing of the launch of The Delhi Model is perfect with the Delhi assembly elections due in a couple of months from now. This perhaps explains the comparisons drawn on what the AAP government has delivered in Delhi as compared to all previous Delhi governments and also on the precarious stature of the state of Delhi. 

He laments about how the BJP-ruled Centre usurped control over Delhi’s bureaucracy and empowered the LG to an extent that he could scuttle any initiative of a democratically elected government. The author takes on the central government aggressively for having unleashed investigative agencies on Delhi’s ministers and the CM while explaining the changes AAP wanted to bring in the liquor excise policy. In a scathing attack he talks of the absurdity of alleged corruption and loss to the state exchequer from a policy that was all set to double the tax revenues within a year. 

The only word of praise for work done by anyone other than the AAP government is when the author talks of greening Delhi. He admits that there is very little public land available to make a difference as most of it is already built upon or is covered by plantation. This should make Sheila Dikshit’s soul a little less restless!

The Delhi Model swings between an academic discourse on the development work done by the AAP government in Delhi to a hard-hitting political document that belittles the BJP-led central government on not letting a legitimate state government carry out its well-meaning initiatives to the fullest. The trouble is that in this process it diminishes the academic worthiness of the book or even a chronicle of a decade under AAP as it looks more of a biased, self-obsessed report card on AAP’s performance.

(Giraj Sharma runs a brand consultancy called Behind the Moon; he also runs a blog called State of Delhi)

Book details

• Book name: The Delhi Model
• Author name: Jasmine Shah
• Pages:  334 p
• Price:  ₹799

You can find the book here.