Author: Tavleen Singh
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: January 18, 2004
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/archive_full_story.php?content_id=39400
Introduction: If Sonia had done
more rural touring in the past five years she might have discovered long
ago that about the only issue that is meaningful about her political career
is that she happens to be Italian by birth and not Indian.
Last week Sonia Gandhi set off on
a kisan yatra. Rural India is so distant from our genteel, middle-class
lives that Sonia appears to have felt the need to dress the part. Perfect
grooming and elegant silk saris were swapped for scruffy Medha Patkar look
and off she went into the wilds of Western Uttar Pradesh with at least
one TV crew in devoted attendance. I would have liked to have been there
myself but as someone who totally opposes the idea of an Italian Prime
Minister for India I am on Sonia's pariah list. It did not matter, though,
because thanks to the tireless attention of the TV crews who accompanied
her it was as good as being there in the mustard fields and the dust and
the smell of drying cow dung. Every news bulletin carried some new snippet
so, as the three-day tour progressed, it became as riveting as a political
soap opera. Sonia Gandhi and the cow dust hour. Gucci godhuli.
The cow dust must have affected
Sonia in some mysterious way because she became unusually accessible to
the media. She who rarely deigns to grace us lowly creatures with a smile
and a sound byte became loquacious on the ''failures'' of the Vajpayee
government and at least one hack shared a meal with her for he reported
that she relished an evening meal of arhar ki dhal and roti. A Hindi newspaper
declared the tour a ''super hit''. Local peasants, according to its reporter,
were thrilled that she had sought them out to share chai and chutney ki
roti.
Politically, she appears to have
shaken off the ''disappointment'' of losing Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and
Chhattisgarh judging by the belligerent attack on both the BJP government
and the Prime Minister. She recently sneered at the Prime Minister for
thinking that writing poetry was a qualification for running the country
and on the rural tour she pronounced that his government had failed on
''all fronts''. What she meant by this she did not explain (she rarely
does) but most mystifying was her remark that her tour of Western Uttar
Pradesh proved that the Vajpayee government was ''anti-farmer''. Excuse
me? How? Was it the humble cuisine or her personal discovery of rural India?
What came across most forcefully
from the rural tour, though, was Sonia's determination to become our first
Italian Prime Minister. She will not be stopped (except by the voter) and
she is not going to allow the small matter of not being Indian come in
the way. ''The BJP talks about my foreign origins because they know they
have achieved nothing in five years. This party has become so scared of
a lone woman that they need to raise meaningless issues like my foreign
origin.''
Meaningless? If Sonia had done more
rural touring in the past five years she might have discovered long ago
that about the only issue that is meaningful about her political career
is that (no matter how good a wife and daughter-in-law she has been) she
happens to be Italian by birth and not Indian.
It's hard to blame her for believing
that despite this she has to soldier on. What else is there to do when
the only other idea her party has been able to come up with, in nearly
ten years of sitting on the Opposition benches, is Priyanka. To force Priyanka
to come and ''save the party'' a magazine called Priyanka's World was recently
launched in Mumbai and, even as I write, a group of Priyanka devotees is
marching towards Delhi to beg her to enter politics. Sonia may not have
much political or administrative experience but even she knows that Priyanka's
turn to be Prime Minister of India cannot come this election. So, who is
left to save India from the evil, communal BJP?
Shielded as Sonia is from reality,
by sycophants and the high walls of security, she has not noticed how much
India has changed. The difference between communal and secular politics
started blurring a long time ago when her late husband as Prime Minister
publicly justified the massacre of thousands of innocent Sikhs.
In the years since, the Indian voter
has learned to accept that when it comes to divisive politics our two main
political parties are not very different. Besides, in these ''feel good''
times the only thing that matters to the voter is that he sees visible,
material improvement in his standard of living. Whether we like it or not
consumerism is the only ism that counts so despite the best efforts of
people like Mr Togadia, give a voter a choice between a trishul and a mobile
phone and he will choose the phone.
The only political party that seems
not to have understood the extent to which things have changed is Congress
so, election after election, they offer us a member of the Nehru-Gandhi
dynasty as their magic wand. It does not work any more. No matter how many
days Sonia spends eating chutney roti with peasants, no matter how much
of a super-hit the media thinks she is, it will make little difference
unless she can convince people that the Congress Party has more to offer
than her and Priyanka. So enjoy the cow dust hour Soniaji, but if you think
a few tours of rural India can make you Prime Minister please think again.
- Write to tavleensingh@expressindia.com
