With just a little over two weeks to go, all the main players seem to be playing against their own better versions and images, which, ironically, you are more likely to meet among the voters on the ground, as I did when I travelled through five states on an election journey.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who after a two-term incumbency, enjoys an enviable respect for being a change-maker among large sections of the electorate, who is seen by many as a leader with a broad canvas, and credited with big ideas and strong ambitions, is reducing himself to the relatively minor role of spectre-monger in chief.
Earlier in the election, he spoke of a Congress conspiracy to wrest the due share of SCs/STs/OBCs, in terms of quota, property and budgetary allocation, and hand it over to the Muslim minority. On Saturday, in his first rally in the national capital, the PM framed the election as development versus “vote jihad” and said: “They want to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision on Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, they openly declare they will bring back Article 370, that they will disarm India’s nuclear weapons”.
The fact is, the PM’s chief target, Congress, has welcomed the Court decision on Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, and it has urged restoration of statehood, not of Article 370, in Kashmir. As far as the promise to eliminate nuclear weapons is concerned, it figures in the CPM’s manifesto, which is a Congress ally in INDIA. But the differences between Congress and the Left on the nuclear issue have been no secret ever since the Communist parties withdrew support to the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government on the India-US deal that effectively ended India’s nuclear isolation globally.
If the PM does himself a disservice, Rahul Gandhi is not doing himself any favours either with his speeches and promises. This, at a time when, among the people, he is beginning to be seen as someone who may have been unfairly labelled a “pappu” by the BJP’s propaganda machine, and who, whether or not he has earned the vote, deserves a hearing.
After two marathon Bharat Jodo Yatras, south to north, east to west, Rahul must still contend with older questions about his CV — he has not taken on a governance responsibility so far, they say, and that he owes his position to a privileged background mostly. But because of the arduous yatras, perhaps, more voters in this election, in comparison to earlier ones, seem willing to give him credit for raising issues like the missing jobs, even as they or others express scepticism about his own ability to deliver on these.
His promises of cash transfers to women and the unemployed young,“khatakhat”, if the INDIA alliance comes to power, put those hard-won gains at risk. “Khatakhat” politics seems too much like gimmickry that voters can see through, especially in times when questioning voices can be heard even among the Modi government’s labharthis or beneficiaries. What is the real value of the array of cash transfers or other subsidies, many voters are asking, in comparison to the self-reliance that would flow from the creation of job opportunities, which remain out of reach.
The third example of a leader diminishing himself is that of Arvind Kejriwal. By all accounts, the AAP is an embattled party. It faces the brunt of the Modi government’s aggressive weaponisation of agencies to target its political opponents selectively. The AAP’s top leaders have been sent to jail in the alleged excise policy scam, and Kejriwal himself was released by the Court on interim bail only to campaign.
Ever since he prised open a closed political field to launch the AAP, building on the Anna Hazare-led mobilisations against corruption, the importance of Kejriwal has exceeded the AAP’s limited electoral spread and reach. It lies in holding up the possibility of a politics that is less weighed down by baggage and closer to the ground than the one practised by the older players and parties.
In the ongoing election, his arrest on election-eve has caused ripples far beyond Delhi, even if there is little evidence yet that it has become a factor that could be decisive. It is a talking point certainly — some voters question its timing, while for others it is part of a bare-knuckled politics that has a long history and several complicities. Still others say it is something for the courts to sort out eventually.
When the AAP took to the streets, today, Sunday, however, the immediate context was the murky swirl of allegations about the alleged assault on AAP RS MP Swati Maliwal at Kejriwal’s residence by a Kejriwal aide, who has been arrested subsequently. A David and Goliath battle between two parties is shrinking, despite AAP’s accusations of BJP involvement, to a tawdry inner-party controversy.
For Kejriwal at this moment to maintain silence on the accusations of his party’s woman MP, and for his party to be seen to be protecting its top leader’s aide amid a war of videos and tweets instead of launching an investigation into the events internally, is a comedown from the high ground it had sought to climb against the BJP.
Till next week,
Vandita
