When this election season started, To the Point said Lalu Prasad and Narendra Modi would be the best orators in the campaign.
At the end of the campaign I am revising my positions substantially.
Lalu Prasad, my all-time favourite as a campaigner, disappointed me completely. His magic was missing. Nitish Kumar turned out to be a shrewd campaigner raising the right issues in the right proportion at the right places in the caste-ridden terrain of Bihar. Outside Gujarat and off his trademark Hindutva, Modi didn’t sound as good. Jayalalitha kept an audience of not less than 50,000 spellbound for nearly an hour on a terribly hot afternoon in Villupuram in Tamil Nadu. Late into one evening last week, I listened to Congress leader P Chidambaram at his hometown Karaikkudi– he swayed the crowd with statistics on government spending in welfare and some rhetoric.
Politicians usually suggest that they take positions that please their voters. But I think good leadership is more about mobilizing public opinion in support of a sensible political line.
M K Azhagiri, son of Tamil Nadu chief minister M Karunanidhi is the DMK candidate in Madurai. At a public meeting, he attacked AIADMK chief J Jayalalitha. “She calls herself Miss. But is she one? She is not married, true. But then….,” he questioned, in some details, Jaya’s right to be addressed Miss and the crowd seemed enjoying and appreciating it all.
Just two hours later and 90 km apart, in Karaikkudi, Chidambaram – who is contesting with the support of DMK – told his gathering something that surprised me. “I have no caste, no religion. In my family there are all religions and castes,” he said and the crowd applauded him. I was surprised that a politician could afford to publicly denounce caste and religion. Even the Marxists in Kerala do not do that.
Listeners of Azhagiri and Chidambaram are roughly from the same socio-political milieu. They appreciated the views of both Chidambaram and Azhagiri.
Who is to blame? The neta or the janata?
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