Square This Circle: Sheila For PM, Momentum For Kejriwal, Modi Cruising
Saeed Naqvi
Supposing Delhi Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit wins a fourth term, why would she not then be the Congress Party’s Prime Ministerial candidate?
Delhi is one
of the nation’s most complicated states with multiple authorities always eager
to take credit and pass on blame, an alert and complaining middle class like
the null point in a sea of migrants leaving the national capital region with a
disconcertingly choppy, unstable demography.
If it is the
national policy to allow every car manufacturer in the world to choke Delhi’s
traffic as well as its citizens, what can the poor Chief Minister do? People
are so angry with the political class in general, that there is a psychological
need to feel good about something. Sheila has provided for just that need: the
Metro, newer buses, steadier supply of electricity and water. People talk about
these improvements in their lives, just as they grumble about price rise which
they place in the Congress kitty almost separating the party from Sheila.
Winning three
elections in a row are not Sheila’s only qualifications. She is educated in the
modern idiom. Her late husband, Vinod Dikshit, was an outstanding IAS officer.
His junior colleagues still remember the warmth of their house in Lucknow. That
is a vast network to be conversant with.
Uma Shankar
Dikshit, her father-in-law, the last of the old guard of the Congress, leaned
on Sheila’s efficient management style greatly when he was the Union Home
Minister. She became the most powerful “Bahu” in the country. She was Minister
in the Prime Minister’s office and so on.
Is there any
leader in the Congress party with this range of experience? True, she is no
spring chicken but then the spring chicken the party is focused on is simply
not growing wings.
She certainly
compares favourably with the talent on show today. She is a good speaker and an
excellent interviewee on TV, talents not to be sniffed at in today’s public
life.
That she is a
Brahmin will help too; Narendra Modi does not carry that embellishment. And
yet, the party’s high command will not, by hint or gesture, indicate that she
could be in line for the top job. Indeed, if such hints were available to the
party cadres in Delhi would they not work with a greater sense of purpose? In
that event Ms. Dikshit would almost certainly have carried Delhi. BJP had got
into the game late. Harsh Vardhan and Vijay Goel did not make a very pretty
picture pushing laddoos into each other’s mouth on the day of the compromise. And
yet, there is no evidence that the Congress has any tricks in its bag except
the usual Tu Tu – Mein Mein with the BJP and recently somewhat nervously with
the Aam Aadmi Party too.
The momentum
that Arvind Kejriwal and his team have built up is a phenomena the country will
have to reckon with. Should he cross double digits in a house of 70 in his
first outing, he will send a wave of relief across the length and breadth of
the country.
To the AAP
will go the credit for having provided a possible escape from the rogue’s gallery
that the electoral arena has begun to resemble, lined as it is with posters of
aspirants, one more unattractive than the other.
There are,
here and there, some fairly attractive state governments but they plough a
lonely furrow, unnoticed by a media which likes to play up excitements it can
dwell on for long and without too much cost. Manik Sarkar in Tripura has by all
accounts run an excellent administration. He has been in office longer than
even Sheila Dikshit. Being CPM, he clearly embraces the wrong ideology,
otherwise he too would have received some mention in passing when the Gujarat
model is glorified morning, evening and the afternoon. There are other and some
very dark horses who will come out from the shadows nearer the 2014 national
elections.
Suspense
remains on many issues, the principal among them the script Narendra Modi is
expected to follow. Who has written this script? By the time elections take
place in May 2014, he will have been cruising at very high altitude for a year.
He was boosted sky high at the BJP conclave in Goa in June. That is when he
peaked. Will he not burn himself out in the course of this marathon? Is he not
already showing signs of fatigue by mixing up names, furnishing wrong
historical data, fumbling for facts? Is he not declining from demagogy to
provincial prattle?
Considering
that Rahul Gandhi has not measured upto the competition on offer, there is
probably some panic in the cloistered enclaves of the Congress high command.
Last month
some channels reported that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has been persuaded to
campaign for the 2014 elections. An agitated spokesman, Ajay Maken, did not
just deny the story. “We condemn news channels who have claimed Priyanka Gandhi
will be campaigning across the country”, he thundered. Why a “condemnation” of
the media when a mere denial would have been sufficient? Was the media onto
some debilitating sibling rivalry in the Nehru-Gandhi household?
Eversince,
that denial, Priyanka Gandhi has been visiting Rae Bareli, with the young MP
from Madhya Pradesh, Meenakashi Natarajan, a Rahul Gandhi discovery. The other
day she even made a foray into Amethi.
Meanwhile,
Maken keeps some credit because the Priyanka-Meenakshi duet has so far confined
itself to the family estates, Rae Bareli and Amethi.
A pollster
has just whispered in my ear that the BJP may win all four major states and
that Congress will be left only with Mizoram. Should that happen, Modi will
have the momentum nationally in the same proportion that the Aam Aadmi has in
the state. But wait a minute: the same pollster had told me a month ago that
Delhi was hurtling towards a hung assembly with Aam Aadmi looking comfortable
in 15 seats. Believe nobody until the results are out on December 8.
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