Why McPoliticians are changing the system
Everyone says fast food is unhealthy. Nobody cares. Data says 2.5 billion people across the world eat street food while 66 per cent of Indians have fast food at least once a week. Nothing new about it. Fast food had been around for centuries before McDonald’s and KFC. Excavations in Pompeii revealed Romans patronised fast food outlets called thermopolium, complete with branding and menus. Roman households did not have kitchens and ordered in. The offerings were proto-fast food: the Pompeii hamburger ‘isicia omentata’ consisted of meat patty and fish sauce served on bread.
Donald Trump, while stumping for his next presidential run, flipped burgers at McDonald’s last week. Trump’s best political patty is his status as an outsider in the ‘Washington swamp’— a bog of favours, bromances, dirty deals and dirtier secrets—which calls to his fan base, which is solidly red neck, racist and capitalist captains—outsiders in America’s woke establishment. Perhaps, this outsider-ness is what makes Narendra Modi Trump’s “best friend”,—himself an outsider who stormed the citadel of Delhi’s cosy power circus and refashioned it as his own.
Not with an ‘isicia omentata’ or a Big Mac though, but with a political samosa maybe. Nevertheless, the common factor is their individuality. Neither has a recognised mentor. They were not fashioned in the crucible of politics by a famous guru or were taught the ropes by a mass market mentor. They did it on their own, and they did it fast. No gourmet politics. No Michelin chef to fancy them up. They are simply Fast Food Politicians aka FFP.
A shift is happening across the world in politics: the rise of the FFP; powerful men and women who swiftly raced to the top without a godfather at the cookout. Italian PM Giorgia Meloni didn’t go to college. Frits Bolkestein, referred to as the ‘mentor’ of Dutch extreme right wing leader Geert Wilders, opposes his renegade student’s views. In spite of their RSS upbringing, Modi, Shah, Fadnavis or Shashi Tharoor did not have celebrated mentors. Neither did K Kamaraj, though he mentored many.
The old rule in politics is that a leader is groomed by a respected figure who shapes them with a defined ideology, the most famous example being Gandhi and Nehru. Mulayam Singh and Lalu Prasad were Ram Manohar Lohia’s pupils. Nitish Kumar was a Jayprakash Narayan acolyte. Mayawati was launched by Kanshi Ram. Chandrababu Naidu’s father figure was NTR. J Jayalalithaa’s guiding light was MGR. Though all of them had brought their discrete personas to public life, there was a hand that rocked the cradle. Or lit the BBQ. Not for Trump or Modi.
Fast Food Politics is here to stay as more and more young leaders seek the quick route to power. The old Congressmen who earned their stripes in the Freedom Movement are mostly dead. LK Advani, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, George Fernandes and Arun Jaitley earned their political spurs in prison during the Emergency. Since 1975, India has not produced a movement to tutor young leaders through experience and confrontation. The most agitational politics they ever did was in student unions.
The Modi movement converted a generation into a fan base with disruptive, unorthodox politics which was actually political fast food: demonetisation, surgical strikes, BRICS et al. But politics has a dynamic of its own: Modi took on the system only to become the system. Trump couldn’t do it with MAGA because he is not a serious politician, but a serious president. ‘When in Rome, Do as the Romans Do’ goes the adage. Flip burgers. Sell tea. Or, learn the FFP wisdom: Fast and steady wins the race.