Arvind Kejriwal has lived a dream, but he must slap that alarm clock now and wake up to reality. The Delhi Assembly election results have proved most pollsters except Chankaya wrong. Then again, perhaps it’s to do with the name.

Twenty eight MLAs is a spectacular showing and not just a spectacular debut. But the faith that the people of Delhi have put in Aam Aadmi Party and Kejriwal must be repaid immediately. Mathematical calculations are making AAP dither from staking its claim to form the government. They shouldn’t. The Bharatiya Janata Party, under the leadership of the affable Dr Harsh Vardhan – let’s be honest, if he wasn’t in BJP, the AAP would have welcomed him in their fold – has said it is not interested in forming the government. This leaves only AAP at the helm. But it fears a vote of no-confidence at the very first instance that it tables a bill, a vote it feels it will lose. This may be a true assessment – for nothing would please Congress more than to see its bête noire flounder at the very first baby step. The BJP might also vote against AAP if it comes down to it, but it is unlikely given the proximity of the Lok Sabha polls.

However, there is one calculation that the AAP must factor in: to repay as soon as possible the faith Delhites have put in a debutant party. For six months until a re-election takes place, the people of Delhi would be paying beefed up electricity bills. They would be clamouring for a few buckets of water, waiting for hours in serpentine queues to get free medicines. And for this reason alone, AAP must not fear the unknown. A leader never fears the unknown, and braves the winds that can destroy him.

What AAP is doing now by not staking a claim even after the BJP has categorically refused the same, is in many ways similar to how LK Advani behaved when the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was in power – fearing the unknown. He could very well have tabled a vote in Parliament asking for implementation of the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) – a promise the BJP had made in its manifesto, and one that had also been endorsed by none other than the Supreme Court in the famous Shah Bano judgment. But he didn’t. He feared that the vote would go against him, against the BJP and the NDA. He forgot that the real purpose of the Parliament is to debate, to put forward a point of view. If you believe in something, it is upon you to convince others of it. If they fail to be convinced, so be it. But at least you tried. Advani never put UCC to vote fearing the house would defeat the motion. The result was that we never got to know what other MPs thought about this code. But one thing we did get to know was that Advani feared going into the unknown.

When people reach positions of power, they inexplicably start to dither. They forget what life was like before they reached the top. They forget a simple fact of life – that were they to lose everything from hereon, they can still go back to where they were before and be happy. If an AAP government falls soon after it takes control of Delhi, at least they can say we tried to bring to fruition some of the promises that we made to the people of Delhi.

Strange as it may seem, what AAP fears is actually a win-win situation. Here’s how.

Once they form the government, all they need to do until the Lok Sabha elections in May next year, is to table only those bills that the Opposition – the BJP and Congress – dare not veto and demand a no-confidence vote. AAP’s promise of a 50% reduction in electricity bills is one such bill of intent. If AAP tables it, it would be suicidal for BJP or Congress to veto and go against public sentiment, for fear of being decimated in the impending Lok Sabha polls. There are other such non-contentious issues on which the AAP can table the bills. Then, nearing May, 2014, they can then bring forward those “contentious” bills – exclusively promised by AAP, for example the Jan Lokpal and many others – which they know the BJP and the Congress wouldn’t agree on. A vote of no-confidence would make the AAP government fall. But in the eyes of the people, this would be seen as treachery – it certainly would be in AAP’s interest to take this stand. What would follow would be a sympathy wave for AAP in the Lok Sabha elections. They may even manage to get as many as 5 to 6 MPs in Parliament. It would be poetic justice to then be sworn in by their nemesis of yore, Shri Pranab Mukherjee – a Yuva moment.

AAP is a start-up and start-ups need to take huge risks or they would remain start-ups and be gobbled up by the big fish. Kejriwal needs to jump – he’s got nothing to lose – there’s a bungee cord tethered to his waist that he hasn’t probably noticed. All he needs is a good swig of Mountain Dew.