The Delhi assembly election was undoubtedly a milestone event. The havoc wrought by it has broken the myth that Narendra Modi is invincible. It should serve as a wake-up call not only to the Modi-Amit Shah duo but also to the entire political class, including Arvind Kejriwal himself.

The “AK-67” (as the tag stuck him for an unprecedented 67 seats win out of 70 in Delhi) has done the right thing to say that the mandate is “scary”.

One possible explanation of the mandate is actually on the social transformation that has come to stay following globalisation. It has a typical angle for North-east India which has remained economically underdeveloped for a plethora of reasons ranging from New Delhi&’s neglect to the absence of work culture among the locals.

Analysts, including those from the North-east and Christian leaders and intellectuals, have their argument to link the Delhi mandate to the Modi regime&’s “eloquent silence” on attack on churches and and the Prime Minister&’s autocratic style of functioning.

But they would miss the point that the “angry Delhiites’ verdict” is actually linked to the neo-liberal economic and political forces those have set in.

The disparity between the rich and poor is frightening and to top that there is a huge force of middle class that is in a hurry to beat the neighbourhood young man and woman around. Along with these, the massive public frustration is only growing against price hikes, corruption and cronyism and communalism.

There is certainly another angle to the February “revolutionary polls” in Delhi and this is linked to the Prime Minister&’s taunt at Arvind Kejriwal, calling him a “Naxal”. Of course, for his part Kejriwal called himself an anarchist last year. But the shrewd politician in Modi missed the point that the AAP chief has tendered an apology on several occasions in the run up to the polls.

From North-easterners settled, working or studying in Delhi, the 7 February election became all the more important after the BJP had goofed up on their Vision Document by tagging the North-east people as “immigrants”. Of course, the saffron party quickly clarified and apologised by describing it as an “error”, but the damage was undoubtedly full blown.

“My friends asked me why I am still working for the BJP as they have called us ‘immigrants’,” rued a Naga voter in south Delhi.

Incidentally, the tiny population of North-easterners in Delhi has been well focused on by the BJP, with cadres earmarked around 20 constituencies. For the BJP, party strategists say, it was not only a modest crowd of 10,000 across the city but a manner of reaching out to the North-east region as a whole — which had responded enthusiastically to Modi in states like Nagaland, Manipur and Assam. Now that the verdict is out, with Modi having been handed a shocking defeat and reports suggesting that North-east Delhiites overwhelmingly voted for the APP, the take aways are crucial though highly complex.

India, Delhi and the North-east people are increasingly moving towards a post-ideology era in politics. Kindly note, Delhi North-east voters understandably did not cast their vote in favour of the Congress even as it has had a long history of association with the North-east and many North-east youngsters in Delhi would have parents and uncles still in the Congress. The political divide, as such, and the ideological moorings are now a thing of the past. Even while moving closer to the BJP, the North-east people, including those who went on moving around with saffron caps on the polling day, had hardly to do with the Hindutva politics of the BJP. Not that reconversion was not an episode that hurt them. But the urge was more economical and, to an extent, the “euphemism called greed” to be closer to the power.

North-east youths in Delhi or back home have always been a key part of aspirational India. They are more interested in economic prosperity and being career-centric. Certainly the rise of the middle class is a big factor in this and also that agriculture is not the first choice of youngsters in the region.

Another important takeaway from the Delhi verdict from the North-east point of view would be that the AAP actually demonstrates the victory of “civil society” in taking up roles of governance. Historically, this is not new for the Northeast. Assam had witnessed the emergence of the regional Asom Gana Parishad and its landslide victory in 1986. Youth organisations in Nagaland, Meghalaya and Mizoram are not only influential, they also command tremendous respect. In earlier write ups for this page, I had dwelt on the performance of the Young Mizo Association. So while the Congress and other regional party politicians are busy these days lampooning Narendra Modi, the established political class in Assam, Nagaland or Mizoram should be careful of a possible scenario if leaders and volunteers from such youth organisations float their own parties. So far the trend used to be joining parties like the Congress, Naga People&’s Front (or its earlier version, Naga People&’s Councl), so the likes of Tarun Gogoi and even Prafulla Mahanta should be careful of “local Arvind Kejriwals” in their states. In Assam, the AAP has already announced going it alone in the 2016 assembly polls.

Assam AAP leader Manorom Gogoi has said that it will develop a state-specific model for building the organisation and for providing realistic solutions to the burning problems like floods, illegal immigration, unemployment and insurgency. A mini-revolution has possibly begun.

The author is a special representative with The Statesman in New Delhi and author of book The Talking Guns: North East India. He blogs at www.bestofindiarestofindia.blogspot.com