Before battle, the phoney war

By Swapan Dasgupta

There is a theory doing the rounds that the Congress Party narrowly averted scoring a monumental self-goal last week. The issue, naturally enough, wasn’t some key issue of governance but something far more engaging: the schedule of the Indian Premier League T-20 tournament.

It is well known that the political class was dissatisfied by the fact that the IPL matches would be held bang in the middle of the election campaign. The contrived excitement of pyjama cricket was calculated to divert popular attention from the political future of India and the unprepossessing candidates for the Lok Sabha.

With its rich experience of turning national calamities to partisan advantage, the Congress, it is whispered, decided to utilise the T-20 fever to sell its youthful credentials and its youth icon. Its treasury unaffected by the economic downturn, its strategists reportedly drew up a Rs 100-crore plan to overwhelm cricket with the din of its copyrighted Jai Ho.

The fanatical Pakistanis who attempted a Munich in Lahore last week played spoilsport. They reopened the delicate subject of terrorism which, if the rhetorical flow is anything to go by, had receded from the headlines after India purportedly scored a famous diplomatic victory by forcing the ramshackle Asif Zardari Government to concede that the 26/11 plot had indeed been hatched in Pakistan. The UPA Government had hoped that terrorism would quietly fade away from the political agenda. Data from opinion polls had repeatedly indicated that those who identified terrorism as India’s most pressing problem tended to favour the NDA over the UPA.

Unfortunately for the Congress, the real killjoys were the cricket administrators. In a bid to ensure that the focussed attention on T-20 wasn’t derailed by political sideshows, the IPL bosses decided that it would be prudent to bar any political advertising on the grounds and in the approved telecasts. In short, the organisers of the T-20 tournament will be spared all potential charges of favouring one political party over another.

The Congress, it has been said, recoiled in horror to the IPL’s ban on political advertising. There are suggestions that the first knee-jerk reaction of an arrogant party was to press for the cancellation or postponement of the IPL matches on “security” considerations. On sober reflection this was modified, particularly after it became known that a vengeful response would be greeted with public disapproval. It was also noted that the opposition would have a ball taunting the government for banning cricket as a substitute for fighting terrorism.

What was initially touted as a grim terrorist threat to the leisure industry was quickly modified to a few measures to lessen any inconvenience caused by the deployment of forces for election duty.

What the IPL incident revealed was a creeping sense of desperation in the Congress Party. It is possible that all the fuss really centred on the frustrations of those strategists who couldn’t get to splurge another Rs 100 crore on a more explicit version of Bharat Nirman. However, the same desperation was in evidence over the tomfoolery around the auction of Mahatma Gandhi memorabilia in New York.

To begin with, the absence of the Mahatma’s old pair of spectacles and his wooden bowl has never been a serious impediment to appreciating the man’s worth. These pieces of memorabilia are about as central to Gandhian studies as the mummified relic of the goat which travelled with the Mahatma to London for the second Round Table Conference in 1931. They have no significance whatsoever.

Since governments are driven by media hype in the run-up to elections, it is understandable that the Congress sought to insulate itself from charges of unconcern for the Father of the Nation. However, in its desperation to salvage what the Mahatma had bequeathed to the dog-loving Nawab of Junagadh and his grand-niece, the government overlooked the delicious irony of Gandhian relics being paid for from liquor profits.

Vijay Mallya’s bailout package (which could earn him the elusive berth in the Rajya Sabha) was projected as a UPA achievement. According to the vice chairman of the Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti Tara Gandhi Bhattacharjee, “The Union Government handled the whole issue of acquiring the belongings of Mahatma Gandhi in the most dignified and commendable manner.” Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi, too, admitted that the government had managed the bid by the liquor baron. He berated sceptics for “sensationalising” the mix of Gandhi and booze.

The issue of who paid for the Mahatma’s discarded specs and pocket watch is unlikely to shape voting patterns in April and May. Neither will there be any signage during the IPL that the police arrangements are by courtesy of the Congress candidate from Sivaganga. Yet, the desperation with which the Congress is hard-selling its non-achievements suggest that carefully created media impression of a one-sided election may well be a pipedream.

Money and hype are necessary to bolster the boisterous carnival of democracy but they don’t determine its outcome. We are at the Phoney War stage of the election campaign. The real issues haven’t even begun to be addressed.