 www.indiawrites.org |
|
||
| Search | |||
|
The Great Indian Show: Poll DanceShashi Tharoor connects with ‘Aam admi’By Manish Chand
And, going by his radiant and boyish smile, it appears he is having a great time communicating with this new cast of characters. “Walking on the hot streets of Trivandrum (as many still refer to the Kerala capital) is a lot more exciting than sitting in an air-conditioned room,” says Tharoor as he goes around campaigning, picking a conversation with a tea-stall owner and casually chatting up villagers in a constituency that has a healthy blend of rural and urban voters. “I speak a simple Malayalam, not the high-flautin literary variety. And I connect with people particularly well,” says the 53-year-old Tharoor who has authored nine books, including “The Great Indian Novel” and the bestselling “From Midnight to the Millennium”. “It’s a different kind of joy, embracing ordinary people and listening to what they have to say. I hope to build on this momentum,” he says. And wherever he goes, his pet message is development and his vision of converting Thiruvananthapuram, a city of million, into a truly global city, a knowledge city and a hub of cutting-edge research in bio-technology. “I have been welcomed by the people of Trivandrum. The development of Trivandrum is my main theme,” explains Tharoor, who lost narrowly to current incumbent Ban Ki-Moon for the UN secretary general’s job. Ever since he took the plunge into the famously chaotic world of Indian politics early this month, Tharoor has quietly reinvented himself as a “desi neta (native politician)”. Business suits are out, home-spun khadi is in. Strenuously fighting off the “outsider” tag - a favourite attack theme of his political opponents - Tharoor, sporting a white khadi mundu and shirt with the party-coloured shawl draped around his shoulders, looks confident about his new vocation and his place in it. Standing up for a new kind of development-centric politics, Tharoor said that the “Great Indian Middle Class”, estimated to number around 300 million people, can’t go on pretending that politics was not for people like them. “I do represent the educated Indian middle class which has tended to abstain from politics. I have often argued in my writings that it’s a mistake for the middle class to abdicate this political space to others,” he says. “In other countries, the middle class is the engine of politics. Here, they don’t even bother to vote,” says the man who has juggled with panache the world of high diplomacy as UN under secretary general and his parallel career as a writer and essayist. “The possibilities are endless. It’s necessary that the entire cross-section of Indian society is heard,” said Tharoor. “I certainly come from a non-political background. In a parliamentary system, you can’t do an Obama so one has to find a party that embodies one’s ideals and beliefs. The Congress fitted the billing,” he explained. “One section has been underrepresented: the educated middle class. I represent their beliefs, values, expectations and aspirations,” says Tharoor, who has assembled a tech-savvy team and launched a campaign website to flag off his vision for the city and the country at large. Tharoor may have larger ambitions - his name was doing the rounds when the Manmohan Singh government was looking for a successor to then external affairs minister K. Natwar Singh - but for now he is focusing all its energies on winning the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha seat. “My only aspiration right now is that my party should form the government at the centre,” Tharoor replies hen asked whether he had ambitions to play a larger role on the national stage. Pawar as PM? Daughter Says Thanks…By Manish Chand
She also said her party "has full faith" in Congress Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. "We just don't have the numbers," Sule said from Baramati, one of the most developed districts in western Maharashtra and better known as the pocket-borough of Pawar. Sule is contesting the Lok Sabha elections from Baramati. Even though Pawar is one of the state's best-known politicians, Sule said: "We have done the politics of reality and practicality. We are contesting 22 seats in Maharashtra and maybe 35-40 seats in other states like Orissa and Madhya Pradesh. "We don't have the numbers now. We are now focused on winning the maximum number of seats for our party and our allies," said 39-year-old Sule, who joined the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) two years ago. "We are not opening or closing any doors. Our focus is quite clear: we want the party to grow and we want the party to have an all-India presence," Sule said while responding to speculation that the so-called Third Front was reaching out to the NCP and the possibility of Pawar becoming prime minister after the 15th Lok Sabha elections. "My father was the first to push for Manmohan Singh as prime minister in 2004. We have full faith in him," Sule said, when asked whether the NCP accepted Manmohan Singh as the prime ministerial candidate of not just the Congress but of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA). The NCP, which had 11 seats in the 14th Lok Sabha, is part of the Congress-led UPA. Politics may be part of her family legacy but Sule insisted that she did not join it for the sake of power. She made it clear that she joined it to give broader focus to the social and educational work she has been doing for many years. When asked why she joined politics, the Rajya Sabha member replied: "Development." "In parts of Maharashtra where I am campaigning, there is an acute shortage of water and electricity. I am in politics because I want to make basic infrastructure available to all citizens," said Sule, a student of microbiology who lived in Singapore for many years before coming back to India and joining politics. "Development is our party's chief plank. We have always focused on development, education, healthcare and issues of the disabled. I want every child to get quality education," said Sule, alluding to Pawar's saying that being in politics is 80 percent public service and 20 percent politicking. One of the wealthiest politicians in the country - her declared assets are Rs.42 crore (Rs.420 million) - Sule is managing trustee of the Pawar Public Charitable Trust which has been involved in running schools for the poor and tribals for years. She plans to visit each and every one of the 964 villages in her constituency in Pune district. A new generation leader, Sule says it's time for a new kind of politics centered on issues of development and building better infrastructure in the country. Sule is all for more young people joining politics, but says experience is equally important. "There should be a perfect blend of youth and experience," she said. Who are her role models in politics? "My father. He is a man of vision. Indira Gandhi and, of course, Atalji. I have great personal admiration for him," she said. How does she rate her chances of winning her father's pocket-borough? "I am hopeful. Let's see," replied a cautious Sule. "We are definitely going to do better. We want to win all the seats we contest." UPA can form next government with Left backing: Pranab
"I am not an astrologer, I cannot predict what is going to happen. In the realm of politics everything is possible," Mukherjee told reporters here April 5 in response to questions about the possibility of the Congress' ties with the Left. The external affairs said the Congress did not have any pre-poll truck with the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) in the past but added it had a tie-up with small Left parties in some previous elections. Asked if he agrees with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L.K. Advani's comment that the idea of a Third Front government is a farcical illusion, Mukherjee said: "My conviction is that having a limited number of seats and very little presence at the national level and being unable to project a prime ministerial candidate, they don't have national impact." He added: "They are like six characters in a play in search of one playwright." Mukherjee also described the media debate about the "disintegration" of the UPA as needless. "Unnecessarily there has been a debate about the disintegration of the UPA and about the consolidation of National Democratic Alliance (NDA). UPA is not a political party. It is very much intact and it is not disintegrating." Though admitting differences with allies like the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Samajwadi Party and Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) over the issue of seat-sharing, Mukherjee pointed out that the leaders of these parties have stated that they would be part of the UPA. "Therefore, it (UPA) is not disintegrating," he said. Mukherjee said the BJP lifted the contents from the Congress manifesto and included them in its manifesto. "I was amused to note that apart from the section that they have called 'defending the civilisation' through commitment to Ram Mandir, Ram Setu, cleaning of the Ganges, cow protection and article 370, the rest of the contents of the (BJP) manifesto have been lifted from the Congress manifesto. "In a weak imitation of the Congress commitment to aam aadmi (common man) and our declaration in the manifesto on food security, BJP is indulging in competitive populism by offering 35 kg of wheat and rice at Rs.2 per kg to all BPL (below poverty line) families," he said. Mukherjee also noted the BJP "suddenly starts making very lofty promises when election time comes and after the elections are over, all those promises are relegated to the dustbin." Third Front certain to win Lok Sabha polls: Karat
"While the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) has already broken, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has not a single ally in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and many other states," he said, addressing an election rally in the Tripura capital April 5. Karat said the people are "fed up" with both the Congress-led UPA and the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) governments as their economic policies are same, and want a "third alternative government". In his 30-minute speech, the CPI-M chief cited the "wrong and anti-people policies" of both the Congress and the BJP and stressed the importance of forming an alternative government at the centre. "The agrarian crisis, price rise, unemployment, and the falling living standards of the people are all being ignored by the Congress rulers. This is going to cost them heavily." "When the Congress promises to supply rice at Rs.3 per kg to the poor people, the UPA government completely broke the public distribution system while the prices of essentials rose by 50 percent compared to the corresponding period of last year," he said. Karat said as the left parties intervened in the central government's policies till July last year, the effect of world-wide economic slowdown was yet to impacted on the Indian economy." Talking to the newsmen later, the CPI-M leader, however, refused to predict how many seats the Left parties and other alliance parties of Third Front expected to win. "The Left parties alone are fighting more than 150 seats and if the parties aligned with the Third Front are taken into account, the combine is fighting far more seats than the Congress party," he said. NDA has an edge over UPA: India TV pre-poll surveyNew Delhi: The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is likely to get 187 seats in the Lok Sabha - nine more than the United Progressive Alliance (UPA), a pre-poll survey by the India TV shows. "The NDA has a minor edge over UPA, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may win 144 seats - nine more than the Congress. But if the UPA can bring back its former constituent - the Samajwadi Party, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Lok Janshakti Party - its figure will reach 235," the news channel said April 5 in a release based on the survey. "On its part, the BJP (144) may be able to add 43 more seats from existing allies/constituents taking the tally of the NDA to 187. So, if the Fourth Front gets back to the UPA, the key would still lie with the Third Front constituents at 121," it added. According to the survey, the UPA may then need 37 of them to break away to reach the magical mark of 272. India TV editor-in-chief Rajat Sharma said this was the first time that a survey was done on-camera. "More than 200 experienced reporters fanned across demographies, castes, religion and seats to emerge with this comprehensive and nuanced picture on the mood in the nation," Sharma said. The channel said the survey was based on 50,000 interviews and data mining was conducted by an independent party. Highlights of the survey:
Comments |
|
New Delhi/Thiruvanathapuram: Fish-sellers, slum-dwellers, rickshaw-pullers, taxi-drivers: These are not characters in his new novel or the kind of people Shashi Tharoor would have rubbed shoulders with in his high-flying job as a UN bureaucrat. But the Congress candidate from this high-profile aware Kerala constituency is determined to impress this motley crowd of voters that he is their best hope in the general elections.
She is proud to be her father's daughter but not one to give in to hype. "I respect the sentiments of those who want my father to be prime minister but we have to be practical," says Supriya Sule, MP and daughter of Agriculture Minister and NCP chief Sharad Pawar.
New Delhi: Senior Congress leader Pranab Mukherjee has not ruled out the possibility of the party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) forming the next government with the Left parties' support and said "everything is possible".
Agartala: Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) general secretary Prakash Karat believes it was now "thousand percent confirmed" that the Third Front with the Left parties in the lead would form the government at the centre after the Lok Sabha polls.
I can't go on, says Beckett's Unnamable. I will go on. A writer's injuries are his strengths, and from his wounds will flow his sweetest, most startling dreams.
And Proust, too, killing himself to write his book comes close to the concept of dharma when, echoing Balzac, he says that in the end it's less the desire for fame than 'the habit of laboriousness' that takes a writer to the end of a work. But dharma, as this ideal of truth to oneself, or living out the truth in oneself, can also be used to reconcile men to servitude and make them find in paralyzing obedience the highest spiritual good. 'And do thy duty, even if it be humble,' says the Aryan Gita,
'rather than another's, even it be great. To die on one's duty is life: to live in another' death.
My discovery over the years is that the mother tongues have so much in them, so much that is alive, and are much more pervasive, in all strata of society, in all ages from children to the very old, men and women, literate and non-literate. What holds them together? It's not Sanskrit. It's these mother tongues. I think I went into linguistics because of that. That spoken languages had to be very, very important. It was important in my youth to have discovered this.
Writing is a concentrated form of thinking. I don't know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write about them. Maybe I wanted to find more rigorous ways of thinking. We are talking now about the earliest writing I did and about the power of language to counteract the wallow of late adolescence, to define things, define muddled expression in economical ways. Let's not forget that writing is convenient. It requires the simplest tools. A young writer sees that with words and sentences on a piece of paper that costs less than a penny he can place himself more clearly in the world. Words on a page, that's all it takes to help him separate himself from the forces around him, streets and people and pressures and feelings. He learns to think about these things, to ride his own sentences into new perceptions.
Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. An artist is a creature driven by daemons. He doesn’t know why they chose him and he is usually too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done.
I am trembling with cold