The recent Maharashtra assembly polls and other byelection results offer real hope that things are changing. They are moving in the right direction to render redundant armchair critics and editorial writers living in their own delusional world. Ground realities are beginning to assert in India. We might soon get politics of reality in place of airy-fairy dreams.
These thoughts are occasioned by the victory in central Mumbai of Mr Arun Gawli, president of the Akhil Bharatiya Sena. The media had dismissed Mr Gawli, a former prisoner, as a person of dubious credentials. The media even described him as a mafia don. What do his constituents think of Mr Gawli? Now that he represents them in the state assembly?
I asked a resident of Chinchpokli, the constituency from where he won. "It is disgraceful and an insult to people here," he said angrily. "From the start I was against his contesting this poll!"
"You think things will not improve?"
"How can they? He is a mere mla! He should have been a minister. At least an MP! Only then would Chinchpokli have felt satisfied!"
Some newspaper reporters described Mr Gawli as a Godfather. But Mr Gawli, with a vague resemblance to India's cleanest ever prime minister, the late Gulzari Lal Nanda, with his dyed walrus moustache reminiscent of Groucho Marx, with his slender frame and benign smile, looks refreshingly different from Marlon Brando. Not a single person in Chinchpokli either kisses his hand or calls him Godfather.
They all call him Daddy.
The irritation of Chinchpokli regarding Mr Gawli's status as a mere MLA is understandable. After all Mr Pappu Yadav with less impressive credentials than Mr Gawli has become MP from Madhepura. Earlier, Laloo Yadav and Sharad Yadav had represented this seat. But Pappuji's victory is far more impressive. Laloo won by just 60,000 votes while Pappuji won by over 2 lakh votes.
This trend of ground realities asserting themselves opens up the possibility of a whole new India dominated not by nerds with their silly laptops but by practical leaders who deliver justice, albeit somewhat rough, to the people. Today, the common man gets nothing from the government except statistics. But leaders representing ground realities deliver them results by getting work out of officials, which ministers cannot. The prospect of the future cabinet does dance tantalisingly in one's imagination. One can roll the names of ministers around the tongue with relish. Prime Minister Dawood Ibrahim, Home Minister Chhota Rajan, Foreign Minister Abu Salem, Finance Minister....
(Puri can be reached at rajinderpuri2000@yahoo.com)
