The most dangerous politician in election time is the one who has given up hope but has not yet given up talking. They come into their own before the cameras. Due diligence of the tongue evaporates because there is no visible future, individual or collective, on the horizon, encouraging the overflow of innate or acquired stupidity. Phrases flow, untethered to sense and caution.
Why not sit back and enjoy a break from speeches, go to favourite haunts inside or outside India for longer spells instead of jump-start visits? But nothing is more addictive in electoral politics than the sound of your own voice. Courtesy persuades me not to name names, but the disease is a syndrome, common across the political divide.
If candour was the primary qualification for votes, one undisputed winner would be Vanita Raut of the Akhil Bharatiya Manavata Paksha, who is contesting from Chandrapur in Maharashtra. She has promised beer bars in villages and either subsidised or free-imported whisky for the poor.
You are doubtless looking at the story from the puritan and hence wrong perspective. This is not about alcohol. The poor have had access to alcohol ever since God planted trees that bless us with toddy. Nor is this about bribing voters. Promises and presents have been part of the game since man invented democracy. There used to be a formal term for it: rotten boroughs. Many boroughs are still rotten but we have all agreed to be polite these days.
Vanita Raut’s message is about aspiration. If there can be beer bars in Mumbai, why not in the villages? I must check out the complete manifesto of the All India Humanitarian Party. It must be studded with bejewelled realism.
Parties going broke
American author-adventurer Ernest Hemingway had a maxim about how men go broke—first gradually, and then suddenly. It works equally well for political parties, although sometimes the gradual slippage is so slow as to be imperceptible. But the crash is evident enough. Bengal’s invincible Marxists collapsed from Everest to the Bay of Bengal in a vertical descent, and are still to emerge from sea-sunk oblivion. Their cousins in Kerala were more sensible; they never flew too high, and were never shot down.
A quick look at political outfits teetering on the edge. Glitter-green Mamata Banerjee is being eroded by saffron. In Odisha, Naveen Patnaik has liquidity as long as Naveen Patnaik is in the game. DMK’s three-generation bank balance will see it through one last spin of the casino, but after this the Hemingway principle. The Senas of Maharashtra have spent far more than their returns on invested patriarchal goodwill, so it is a question of time; as it is for the clock on the Sharad Pawar wall. Lalu Prasad and AAP in sporadic geography seem to show some resilience, but only in regional elections.
Reduced to also-ran
As for neither-regional-nor-quite-national Congress, it survives on deficit financing thanks possibly to some beneficial International Mentor Fund. What is common between Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Bengal, Odisha, Andhra, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Punjab? Vibrant regional parties have reduced Congress to an also-ran.
If in search of a surprise, watch Kerala, a state where the I.N.D.I.A. bloc has been partitioned by history. The BJP vote is rising; Congress is slipping; the Left is holding on firmly to its proletariat.
Shifting dynamics in a triangular contest generally lead to the unexpected. On June 4, Congress might see red.
One political party which should be delighted at the arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is Congress. When his deputy Manish Sisodia was sent to the cooler, Congress publicly wondered when Kejriwal would follow. That has happened, so where are the celebrations?
Pinarayi Vijayan charge
What is my source for these revelations? We can check the records, which is tedious; or we can check a speech made by Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Monday, which is fun—and not because Monday was April 1. Vijayan was serious. He said, and I quote verbatim from a prominent national newspaper: “Congress played a key role in levelling corruption allegations linked to the AAP government’s liquor licence policy in Delhi that led ED to go after Arvind Kejriwal.
When deputy CM Manish Sisodia was arrested Congress complained why Kejriwal was not being taken into custody.” Vijayan was not shy about naming Rahul Gandhi, accusing the would-be Congress nominee for prime minister of contesting from Wayanad in Kerala because he wanted to weaken the Left rather than BJP. Point. You cannot weaken BJP where it is not strong. Rahul Gandhi’s natural political habitat is a patch in Uttar Pradesh. Let’s see what happens; but the mood in the anti-BJP camp is conditioned by existence rather than co-existence.
