Last week saw three interesting developments on the political front. The first was Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s press conference where, forget regret, not even circumspection was evident, on UPA II’s disastrous five years in office.
The most blatant statement he made while responding to questions on the charges of corruption his government faces was to argue that the people had reposed confidence in the Congress-led UPA a second time “based on its performance”, even though corruption charges were made on the coal blocks and 2G Spectrum allocation during the UPA I regime! This is to rub salt in the wounds of ordinary Indians who feel cheated about the huge sums siphoned off from the country’s exchequer.
While passing the baton to Rahul Gandhi, the Prime Minister reserved his sharpest words for Narendra Modi. Modi becoming prime minister would be “disastrous for the country” he said.
Asked to comment on Modi’s description of him as a “weak” Prime Minister, Dr Singh hit back by saying that if presiding “over a mass massacre of innocent citizens on the streets of Ahmedabad” was a measure of strength, India didn’t need it.
AAP’s Lok Sabha pitch
This damp squib of a press conference, where once again Singh proved that the only time he displayed evidence of a spine was when he rooted for the Indo-US civic nuclear deal, was followed by the second development. This related to the Aam Aadmi Party, which has captured the nation’s imagination like none other in recent times, announcing with a lot of band-baja its intention to contest the coming Lok Sabha polls.
Even as the party’s chief poll strategist Yogendra Yadav made this announcement, adding that AAP would field 300 candidates in the general elections, clamour began from within the party that Kejriwal should contest the Lok Sabha elections. He should be AAP’s prime ministerial candidate and take on the BJP’s Narendra Modi and the Congress’ Rahul Gandhi. After a lot of hemming and hawing, Kejriwal has promised a rethink.
After his stunning performance in the Delhi elections where, thanks to AAP, the Congress was decimated, and the turn of events which saw him catapulted to the position of Chief Minister, the halo around the AAP leader has only grown. Delivering on the free water promises within days of taking over, and grappling with the stiff power bills issue in right earnest has only enhanced his stature.
Either we Indians are a vulnerable people, or governance had fallen so dramatically and corruption shot up so significantly that we are ready to clutch at any visible straws. And Kejriwal’s dream — of a fair, equitable and corruption-free India for all, and not only the privileged few — is so tantalising that millions of Indians, disenchanted with both the Congress and the BJP, are lapping up what he says.
Endorsement of intelligentsia And so you have the intelligent, educated upper middle class veering towards Kejriwal’s party. As the queue to join the party lengthens, it doesn’t matter that the super privileged – such as former Infosys CFO Balakrishnan or the pioneer of low-cost aviation Captain Gopinath – want to be aam aadmi too.
It was widely expected that the AAP’s influence might be limited to the States surrounding Delhi, such as Rajasthan, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, mainly north and central India. But interestingly, both Balakrishnan and Gopinath hail from Karnataka and another prominent Bangalorean, Rishikesha T. Krishnan, has now endorsed Kejriwal.
Till recently a Professor at the IIM-Bangalore, Krishnan has just been appointed the new Director of IIM-Indore. Within a day of taking charge, he told reporters that AAP’s stunning debut in Delhi held out many “interesting management lessons”. He loved the idea of his students that Kejriwal should be invited to their IIM.
Also, let’s not forget that Southern states such as Tamil Nadu and Karnataka had contributed generously to the AAP’s electoral fund for Delhi. And that is serious putting of your money where your mouth is! This kind of support has electrified the new entrant in Indian politics and even if it manages to get 30-35 seats in the next Lok Sabha, that would be a huge achievement. And, if the mood of the people across India is what it was in Delhi, it could do much better.
Knives are out While for the Congress the game appeared lost long ago, for the NDA, which was hoping to end its 10-year vanvas from the Centre with a bang in 2014, Kejriwal’s sudden eruption on the electoral scene is real bad news. Look at the threat he holds for the BJP; Kejriwal talks on the dangerously similar issues of both corruption and lack of development on which Modi has been getting thunderous response at his mega rallies. He has done the unthinkable, taken Modi out of the front pages. Small wonder the knives are already out. The BJP leaders have been attacking him from Day 1 for agreeing to accept the support of the “corrupt” Congress to form the government in Delhi. In the latest issue of Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna , its chief Uddhav Thackeray has launched a scathing attack on Kejriwal for his “hypocrisy” and doublespeak on issues such as Congress support, not using official transport, and the like.
So on Sunday and Monday, the “paid media” and high profile TV anchors got the choicest of abuse on Twitter for not putting the Ramdev-Modi Delhi rally on the front pages or giving it prime time headlines, while going gaga over AAP’s Lok Sabha aspirations.
This is the third development. Always a man of action, Modi has been quick to very publicly enlist the yoga guru’s support. That Ramdev was always with the BJP nobody doubted. But at the Delhi rally Ramdev raised a few posers to the saffron party and Modi came out with flying colours. He gave the yoga strongman all the right answers on taxes, farmers’ welfare, etc.
But he must have scared quite a section of his support base by his condemnation of “the Pink revolution” that he charged the UPA of ushering in through the modernisation of slaughter houses and meat export. For those who might have missed the meaning he helpfully explained: “ Mutton ka colour pink hota hei ”. So, along with a veiled threat against non-vegetarians, we also get a new term. Red meat is passé; pink meat is in! And all the Michelin star chefs who want the patronage of Indians in the future would do well to take note. Well, as long as meat eaters under an NDA regime are not made to wear pink triangles, as gay people were made to do during the Nazi era, we should survive.
And so rolls on our political juggernaut… the coming days promise to be interesting and entertaining as well.