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The Great Indian Show: Poll DanceSingh is king! Kingmakers are out By Manish Chand
Contrary to the pre-poll scenario, when both the Congress and the BJP were assiduously courting them in search of the elusive 272 halfway mark in parliament, the market value of the so-called kingmakers has dipped dramatically. Almost all exit polls predicted a photo finish contest between the two leading political formations, fuelling ambitions of those who were bracing to drive hard political bargains.
Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi even went to the extent of praising Nitish Kumar and Naidu as examples of good leaders outside the UPA fold - widely seen as overtures to the two who have carved their careers around anti-Congress politics.
Others were broadcasting their wish list for potential suitors. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati's ambitions transcended mere deal-making as she fancied herself as a dark horse who could walk away with the prime ministerial trophy if her Third Front allies manage to get more than 100 seats. She was banking on her friend, Communist Party of India-Marxist leader Prakash Karat, who repeatedly said the Left Front would work to install a non-Congress, non-BJP government at the centre. And Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav went around saying unabashedly that his party's support would be for any alliance that would dismiss his bete noire Mayawati's government. Now the long and twisted wish list of potential kingmakers lie in tatters as they wake up to the post-poll reality. The numbers, on which they were shoring up their dreams, are not simply with them this time round. Rahul Gandhi's summer of content By Manish ChandThis is clearly Rahul Gandhi's summer of content. The self-effacing Nehru-Gandhi scion, who was was once seen as a reluctant politician who shunned the media, is now being credited for his starring role in the resounding victory of the Congress in the 2009 elections and the revival of the party in Uttar Pradesh. Senior party leaders have been quick to lavish praise on the 39-year-old Rahul Gandhi, along with his mother and Congress president Sonia Gandhi, for the decisive victory of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), which defied most pollsters' predictions who were projecting a fractured verdict. The 2009 elections will shine in the Gandhi family lore. The year saw a stunning transformation of the Gandhi heir apparent into a shrewd strategist and politician as he emerged from his mother's sheltering shadows to campaign tirelessly in the blistering summer heat, addressing as many as 10-15 rallies a day. Rahul Gandhi's role in mobilising the youth power, his strenuous efforts at rejuvenating the Congress in Uttar Pradesh, India's largest and most populous state where the party machinery had virtually ceased to exist, and his robust defence of Manmohan Singh as the party's prime ministerial candidate against the BJP's onslaught were seen as some of his singular contributions to the party's victory. "The electorate wants the youth to come up. Rahul Gandhi should get the credit," says senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal. "People have shown faith in Rahul Gandhi's leadership," says Congress leader Digvijay Singh. "The feedback we got from our workers was how Rahul Gandhi, in the past two-and-a-half years, worked in every area, and we had the confidence that it would help us," said party leader Ambika Soni. "The way youth, for the first time, has shown enthusiasm for elections and has thought about joining politics is all because of Rahul Gandhi," Soni added. The Congress general secretary in charge of youth affairs who became MP for the first time from Amethi in 2004, Rahul Gandhi proved to be a relentless campaigner, turning on his charm on voters, trumpeting the Congress' achievements with panache and demolishing opponents with withering sarcasm. NDA exists only in the mind, he quipped famously at his New Delhi press conference at the Ashok Hotel. He addressed over 140 campaign rallies across India and said he wanted to usher in a new brand of democratic politics by promoting a new generation of future leaders chosen through internal elections and talent hunt. He travelled extensively across Uttar Pradesh, which is the size of Britain and France combined, stayed at the homes of Dalit families and kindled hopes of revival for the party that once dominated the state. He also put his computer-savvy team to dig deeper into Mayawati's strategy of building a rainbow coalition spanning lower castes and upper castes and tried to replicate the model. "Uttar Pradesh and Bihar used to be the heart of our strength and it is here we have declined considerably," he had said at a media interaction. Party insiders now cite Gandhi's exhortation to go it alone in Uttar Pradesh after seat-sharing talks broke down with the Samajwadi Party as a sign of his foresight and confidence. "He is centrestage now. He is a fresh breath of change and represents a new generation of politics based on an across-the-board vision of India," says Congress general secretary Tom Vadakkan, considered close to the Gandhi family. Vadakkan cited Rahul Gandhi's initiative in democratizing the Youth Congress and the National Students Union of India (NSUI), of which he is in charge, to underline that he is the future of the party. For senior party leader M. Veerappa Moily, Rahul Gandhi is simply a "star" headed for a bigger role in the party and in national politics. The party is upbeat about the man who could be king tomorrow, the long-distance runner who knows that time is on his side. As party general secretary Prithviraj Chavan says Rahul Gandhi is the "third pole" of the party after Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Election 2009: Numbers game sans big issues By Manish Chand
Unlike earlier elections, there was no single overarching issue or any attention-grabbing slogan to enthuse voters. There were no blazing Bofors guns showing up corruption in high places, as in 1989. Neither was there any 'India Shining' campaign to be mocked at, as in 2004. The hysteria associated with 'masjid' (mosque) and 'mandir' (temple) was missing, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) putting its Hindutva agenda on the backburner for the sake of coalition politics. Says Kuldip Nayar, veteran journalist who has witnessed many elections: "Nobody is raising any big issue. It looks like it's an exercise politicians want to be done with so that real action (numbers game) can begin." The notable exception was the plight of the Tamil population in Sri Lanka - caught in the crossfire between government troops and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) - and this may play a huge role in the swing state that could decide the contours of the next government in New Delhi. But apart from that, BJP candidate Varun Gandhi's hate speech against Muslims while campaigning in the Pilibhit constituency of Uttar Pradesh was easily the scene-stealer in a lacklustre election that was largely devoid of drama, spectacle and lofty messianic promises that often accompany the poll carnival in the world's most populous democracy. Personalised attacks on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh by the opposition BJP calling him a "weak prime minister" and the Congress' spirited defence of their prime ministerial candidate was another leitmotif in the five-phase elections staggered over a month this blistering summer. When combatants were not abusing one another, they were chasing potential allies in an increasingly promiscuous political landscape. Sworn opponents, driven by nothing other than the lust for power, tried to forge alliances in pursuit of the magical halfway mark in the next Lok Sabha - 272 seats. Inflation, economic reforms, India's strategy to deal with global economic meltdown, the India-US civil nuclear deal, the 26/11 Mumbai attack and Pakistan's alleged role in it - politicians vying for power did talk about some of these issues, but they never came to the forefront. The India-US nuclear deal, that sparked the split between the Left and the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) leading to a confidence vote in parliament last year, had little resonance among voters and did not figure prominently in stump speeches of key protagonists on any side of the political faultlines. The Left leaders, who are ideologically opposed to any strategic relationship with the US, raked up the deal in their campaign speeches in Kerala, but it wasn't an overriding issue. Eyeing the burgeoning urban middle class constituency, BJP's prime ministerial candidate L.K. Advani softened the party's opposition to the deal, saying it will not scrap the deal if the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) that the BJP leads came to power. Other political parties, who first opposed the deal and then backed the UPA in the confidence vote last year, were conspicuously silent about it. Regional parties, who appear set to hold the key to power in New Delhi, did not articulate any pan-India vision or speak about India's place in the world. The BJP tried to raise the issue of billions of dollars salted away in Swiss banks and other tax havens overseas. The Congress first sounded defensive, then hit back by pointing out that much of the stashing away had occurred when the NDA was in power, between 1999 and 2004. Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi, seen widely as the party's future prime ministerial candidate, suggested: "Why don't we work together to get the money back?" But that idea did not get far in the middle of a fractious campaign. While voters across the country forced the candidates to confront environmental problems that affected their daily lives - water shortage in farms or air pollution in cities - the candidates themselves were silent on more overarching green issues, especially climate change, on which India will have to articulate its position at a global forum this year. This campaign saw big technological leaps in the way candidates used the Internet, but the message often failed to live up to the medium. Largely, across the country, the campaign was caught in local issues as increasingly aware voters demanded fulfilment of their basic everyday needs like electricity, water, roads, sanitation and jobs. "Developmental issues are becoming increasingly important. Coalition politics gives expression to various regional and local aspirations. Nothing wrong with that," said Mahesh Rangarajan, a political analyst.
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Kingmakers are out. There is only one king in this election. And that's Manmohan Singh, the prime ministerial candidate of the Congress-led UPA (United Progressive Alliance) that won with a decisive margin, belying predictions of a hung parliament.
Not sure of the numbers, a timorous Congress was courting Janata Dal-United (JD-U) leader Nitish Kumar despite his insistence that he was firmly in the NDA camp. Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief N. Chandrababu Naidu, AIADMK leader J. Jayalalithaa, Biju Janata Dal chief Naveen Patnaik were among those the Congress was eyeing and had sent emissaries to woo.
The BJP, which was hoping to emerge at the head of the largest pre-poll alliance, too, unleashed a charm offensive. Senior BJP leader M. Venkaiah Naidu flew to Hyderabad to forge equations with Naidu, a former NDA ally. Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi rushed to Chennai to say it with flowers to Jayalalithaa, who was already declaring price for her support: the dismissal of the M. Karunanidhi government.
Varun Gandhi's hate speech, BJP's attack on Manmohan Singh as 'a weak prime minister' and the hitback by the Congress, shoe-throwing by a journalist to protest inaction over the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. These were some of the enduring images of India's 15th general elections, in which the chase for allies trumped any serious debate over pressing national and global issues.
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