Have no doubt, the biggest sport in India is not cricket, football, tennis or badminton. (Not giving a chance anyway to kho kho, kabaddi or kushti.) Not cricket, but elections—propelled by all kinds of media, social and unsocial. Indeed, following electoral trends with all the attention devoted to a Wimbledon five-setter … that may even stake claim to being a form of religious passion. How else do you explain aunts and uncles, friends and foes, fellow journos and politicos, NRI kinsfolk, calling up at all possible hours to ask not about your well-being but the way Delhi is going. Is it Kejriwal or has the BJP managed to turn around the narrative? Well, hmmm … Delhi is just one half of a state. But most of India is voting in it.
The obsession is quite unbelievable. And believe me, at times hazardous. I was accosted by a stranger at Kempegowda airport. I was waiting for my luggage at the conveyor belt—my big black suitcase, that traumatic moment when all suitcases look big and black, harrowingly indistinguishable from one another. What’s the scene in Delhi? At my perplexed look, the stranger pointed to the display board, showing my arrival from Delhi and added helpfully, “Madam, you look like a professional … that’s why asked.” After the initial double take, I realised this was like asking the score for India vs West Indies, back in the olden days when cricket used to be our religion. Please wait for the exit poll, I quipped and looked the other way. The gentleman on the other side told me sympathetically, “This has become quite common … I also faced it.”
In Delhi, from Parliament to Palika Bazaar to Palam gaon, it’s no different. The President’s address was over and the Budget was read. But what were our MPs discussing, cutting across party lines? Kejriwal and Delhi. (Briefly punctuated by talk on the many high-profile weddings and lunches on the February calendar.) Surprisingly, even Opposition MPs seem to believe the BJP has managed to muscle its way in and successfully changed the narrative with all that goli/gaddar sloganeering. Members of the treasury benches of course claimed Delhi is in for a surprise, recounting many conspiracy theories, hatched internationally and internally. Prakash Javadekar maintained his broadest smile as he exchanged pleasantries.
Two things have happened, though, that are tangible. One, Narendra Modi no longer dominates the discourse. Despite his approval ratings showing no downward swing. Amit Shah is the action figure in the centre now. Modi has been so iconised by the BJP that he has become a remote figure in the background, beyond the reach and pale of common citizens. Second, women and youth, once lamented as apolitical and/or self-centred, are suddenly the most vociferous political lot, wanting to dialogue with no one else but the nation itself, directly. So much so that they have started wondering, where have the men gone? How did they become paragons of feminist facilitation, enablers of youthful exuberance? It can be unnerving for any government.
But why is it not unsettling for Kejriwal? Again, two reasons. He’s in election mode in his half-state and he has an easy answer: law and order is not under him. The other factor is, the AAP is a young party itself, with youthful ideas on bringing deliverance like no other can, and better connect with most crucial demographic segments in this elections. Addressing tangible, everyday issues that have universal appeal in the transactional world we live in. AAP has also, very cleverly, projected an alternative solution-based governance model. So much so that, miles away in Bengaluru, people are wondering if the model can deliver the city from its traffic woes!
By taking their campaign to a high-decibel level, pitching it as a prestige battle to ‘save the nation’ from anarchists and urban naxals, the BJP, it appears, has unwittingly posited itself against that AAP-Kejriwal model—thus giving them a nationwide publicity far beyond their current political stature. As a consequence, they will still be an idea to reckon with, whether they retain Delhi or not. In fact, many within the BJP ecosystem think that a canny Kejriwal, invested with power in Delhi and thus fully contained there, could be a lesser headache for Modi-Shah.
There’s no doubt though that the BJP, with Shah at the helm of affairs, has managed to make inroads into what was initially a totally one-sided election. Shah’s muscular ways have galvanised his dispirited cadres, caught between a powerful central leadership and an infighting-ridden state unit, and may have brought back BJP’s core voters with the anti-Shaheen Bagh position. Will that be enough? Delhi’s 16 per cent floating voters, with no strong allegiance to any political party, will decide who wins. The BJP, if even largely pro-right campuses like SRCC and IIT Delhi are anything to go by, has not quite enamoured itself to the students. Getting an Anurag Thakur or Parvesh Verma as youth leaders, ratcheting up an openly communal pitch, may not be attractive to young minds already angry with Delhi Police’s high-handedness.
Women may still have a thing or two for Modi, but see only scanty points of connect in Shah’s worldview. Those at Shaheen Bagh are indeed looking for a stable place under the sun, without necessarily wishing for gladiatorial fights. As for the men, they seem to have mostly turned spectators of the sport! They have many more matches coming up, to bet on and watch TV … Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh.
Santwana Bhattacharya
Resident Editor, Karnataka Email: santwana@newindianexpress.com