India, April 27 -- The desertion of seven Rajya Sabha MPs of AAP to the BJP should be seen as a tipping point in the former's journey. AAP stormed the gates of politics riding the momentum of an anti-corruption movement in the early years of the last decade. While it suffered its biggest setback in February last year when it lost power in Delhi to the BJP, the current turn of events raises a different question vis-a-vis its future. AAP's initial political momentum was from its rabble-rousing campaign against graft. But once it came into government, both in Delhi and Punjab, it lost its zeal for clean government and resorted to economic palliatives. This was accompanied by what can only be described as an ideology-lite approach to politics where short-term gains were pursued despite their problematic ideological connotations vis-a-vis majoritarian discourse. The loss of power in Delhi - this must be seen as a result of AAP completely dropping the governance ball, partly as a result of hubris and partly the central government's stranglehold on it - and the top leadership's abdicationist attitude to the loss had already raised serious questions about the future prospects of the party. That brings us to the current crisis: The exodus of the some of the party's key functionaries, and even founders, rather than a clamour for a more vibrant intra-party debate on understanding what went wrong and what is to be done now, raises serious questions about AAP's ability to thrive as a political party, or at least, retain its core functionaries. To be sure, one can never write off any party in politics, more so because of just one electoral loss or large-scale defection. But politics has also changed in the past decade, moving sharply towards freebies and welfarism; economic palliatives alone will no longer be enough to grant AAP the uniqueness it had when it first entered politics....