Friday, 30 March 2012

The loser standing small (This was published in 'The Statesman' on 14/03/12)

Last week was an eventful one. Results of elections to Assemblies in five states were announced. Soon, political analysts started dissecting the results on national news channels. The explanations they offered made the results look obvious, logical and natural ~ very much like the scenario where economists give extremely convincing reasons for economic crisis after crisis that is happening.

The same journalists who spent several days discussing how caste and identity politics play a big role in UP and hailed the aam aadmi for looking beyond caste affiliations and voting for development instead. Inspired by Ravi Shastri, almost all anchors unanimously asserted that democracy was the real winner.

Representatives of different parties appeared on television and demonstrated how the same facts could be interpreted and presented in different ways. For instance, the Congress spokesperson who does an incredible job of defending the indefensible every day on different news channels, focused mainly on the Manipur results, the party forming a government in Uttarakhand and the dismal performance of the BJP in UP.

Some other Congress leader attributed the party’s success in UP in the 2009 general election to Mr Rahul Gandhi and its poor showing in 2012 UP Assembly election to a weak party foundation. Congress leaders asked about Mr Rahul Gandhi’s UP debacle would invariably reply in this vein: “Rahul is in UP for the long haul.” This is perfectly logical, reasonable and rational given that the BJP, the SP and the BSP cannot be expected to last in UP for more than the next two and a half months.

Interestingly, after the results were declared, many people started fighting with each other to claim responsibility for the Congress’ dismal performance. Mr Rahul Gandhi was ready to take the blame but Mr Digvijay Singh beat him to it. He promptly sent his resignation letter to Mrs Sonia Gandhi. UP Congress chief Mrs Rita Bahuguna Joshi too sent her resignation letter to Mrs Gandhi claiming responsibility for the debacle.

We have learnt that Mrs Gandhi is upset because despite receiving 1,342 letters of resignation from different people related to the party’s poor showing in UP, she has not yet received any letter from the person who was actually responsible for the defeat ~ Mr Akhilesh Yadav. As one wise person (yours truly) tweeted: “Clearly, it has come to light that UP is Congress’ Akhilesh heel.”

Jest Kidding has learnt that Mr Digvijay Singh sent a copy of his resignation letter to BJP president Mr Nitin Gadkari too but he refused to accept it. “I don’t know why he is sending the resignation letter to me. He is not even a member of the party,” said Mr Gadkari. Our sources tell us that Mr Singh has claimed moral responsibility for Rahul Dravid’s retirement from international cricket as well.

After Rahul Dravid announced his retirement last week, every person with access to the Internet started writing blogposts/articles about Dravid’s commitment, technique, passion, decency, style, contribution, poise, elegance, humility, focus, selflessness and the like. We have learnt that Rahul Dravid read some of these pieces and exclaimed: “I admire the ingenuity of these writers. They seem to know more about me than I know about myself. In fact, I think they know more about me than they know about themselves!”

No comments: