THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Outsider. Out of touch with ordinary people. Zionist agent. American agent. Polygamist. Intellectual.
These, according to young investment banker and non-resident Malayali Keerthik Sasidharan, were not the only things Shashi Tharoor and his core team had to contend with during his election campaign.
“We had less than four weeks to get a campaign going before election day on April 16th. We had no time to make mistakes and learn from them. And then, in a place where cynicism abounds, it was clear no small detail could be overlooked,’’ Keerthik wrote in the ‘Wall Street Journal (WSJ)’, one of the world’s most reputed international dailies, on May 18, a day after he returned to his job in New York.
For four weeks before April 16, the young investment banker was in the city armed with a computer with non-Indian dates and American spell-checkers, plotting a “seemingly improbable’’ victory for Shashi Tharoor. Keerthik was a key member of Tharoor’s nine-member core team, formed mostly of non-resident Malayalis from places as diverse as Liberia, Dubai, New York, California, and Geneva.
Here is why Keerthik temporarily excused himself from his job and went to work for Shashi Tharoor. “That Tharoor would avoid armchair philosophizing about the ills of India and actually try to do something about it appealed to me. Tharoor represented a shard of possibility that we, the people of India, could in fact bring about change in the right direction - however incremental it might be,’’ he writes in the ‘WSJ’.
Keerthik found the accusation of outsider against Tharoor absurd. ``In more ways than one - for a man who had spent his lifetime writing and visiting Kerala, this was an absurd allegation. And to boot, many of us campaign staff were ‘outsiders’,’’ he says.
In retrospect, Keerthik feels that “the heartfelt candidness of Tharoor’s response to this canard struck a chord.’’
“He argued vigorously that he was just like the millions of other Keralities whose family had left home in search of economic opportunities. After all, their sons and daughters, and perhaps they themselves, had left home in search of work, education and spent a lifetime sending money back home.’’
And Tharoor thrust back the accusation at the Leftist government to highlight its abysmal record of economic development. The Left, Keerthik recounts, struck back. “In response to exposing their record, the Left accused him of being a Zionist agent, a polygamist, an American agent, a foreigner - and horror of horrors, an intellectual!,’’ he writes.
The core team was “enraged at the absurdity of it all.’’ Some of them called for responding in kind. Others remained divided on what the appropriate response should be. And time was running short.
“Strangely enough, Tharoor advised calm and composure. His consistent belief that the intelligence of the average Indian voter would see through these sham accusations seemed falsely hopeful to some of the more hardened political minds in the campaign. Yet, he was clear,’’ Keerthik writes.
Tharoor instructed his team to keep talking about development, about employment, about the declining infrastructure, about declining school standards and other social issues.
Keerthik identifies “immense likeability’’ as Tharoor’s biggest plus. “He could come across as a son, a friend, a brother and father figure to various members of Thiruvananthapuram’s electorate. This defined our primary task - to enable and ensure Tharoor’s voice could reach to the maximal parts of the constituency,’’ he says.
For this, they created content: from trite musical productions, slick video displays, succinct text messages, elaborate email blasts, a comprehensive online presence, personal telephone messages for and from Tharoor.
And Tharoor pulled out another big surprise. “He spoke in very competent Malayalam, our native language, about local issues - much to the dismay and amusement of the voters who had heard that he was a foreigner and couldn’t speak Malayalam.’’
Keerthik even conducted informal polls in Muslim areas, amongst the lower income and typically Leftist supporters. Tharoor and his team could sense resentment but, strangely, “were unable to gauge the rising tide of Tharoor’s popularity.’’
On May 16, against considerable odds, Mr Tharoor won by 99,998 votes.
Keerthik signs off saying: “To bring half as much change as his voters hope, he will have to work twice as hard.’’
trivandrum@epmltd.com