Poll Waltz 2014

Politicians In Cinema: Fictionalised Yet Not Quite…

Politics and cinema have been quite comfortable bedfellows since the moving image came into being. From Pyaasa to Leader, Gulaal to Hazaron Khwahishen Aisi, Pratidwandi to Elippathayam: politics has been a many-splendoured thing on the Indian screens too. Even in the masala mainstream, you can taste a little tadka of politics, every now and then. Did Anil Kapoor in Naayak anticipate the rise and rise of Arvind Kejriwal? Was Salman Khan a Kejriwal in Rambo-Hulk avatar in Jai Ho? Was Supriya Pathak’s CM Madamji in Shanghai invoking Vasundhara­raje or Mayawati or both? Weren’t the fundamentalist leaders—Tinnu Anand in Bombay and Ashutosh Rana in Zakhm—seemin­gly inspired by Bal Thack­eray and was Manav Kaul in Kai Po Che a personification of the ideology of a certain party in Gujarat? Alongside are a few films which may have come with the disclaimer, “Any resemblance to a person living or dead is purely coincidental”, but they did make our imagination run wild as we went neta-spotting.

Truth Serums

Compared to the tepid protestations by the Congress, www.truthofgujarat.com, which appears largely to be a solitary man’s effort, has been far more feisty vis-a-vis the Modi juggernaut. To counter the BJP slogan, ‘Har-har-Modi/Ghar-ghar Modi (Divine Modi/Clamour for Modi)’, the website offers ‘Dar-dar-Modi/Thar-thar-Modi (Dar of course means fear and ‘Thar-thar’ is when you shiver too). It’s also now touting a report from Gujarat Sama­char alleging that policemen from the state’s Special Branch were rushed to Varanasi to make an on-the-spot assessment of the challenge likely to be posed by AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal. Has Modi caught the AAP bug?

See Through

This election has a lot of star power going for it and voters in West Bengal’s Birbhum constituency are getting their fair share with current MP and ’80s screen siren, actress Satabdi Ray, who’ll be hoping for a repeat for the TMC from this seat. As Ms Roy likes to tell her voters, they are getting a glimpse of one of Bengal’s leading actresses for free. “Normally you pay to see me, that too on screens and on the stage. But here I am before you and I haven’t even asked for your money, have I?” she recently asked. She does want something, though, and it has to be “in kind, with votes”.

NOTA Anymore

One village in central Kerala has decided to boycott elections completely while another in Wayanad has come with a unique poster: ‘Don’t ask us for votes please!’ Villagers in Nadavayal, Wayanad, fed up with the poor development in the area, have put up these posters on the walls of houses, autos and schools. They say they know who to vote for and politicians who do the great Indian disappearing trick after every election needn’t come sniffing around anymore. Meanwhile, locals from Kollumulla village in Pathanamthitta district are so angry they are pushing for the NOTA option. And this because politicians have failed to assuage their concerns after their village was classified under the ‘ecological sensitive zone’ to protect the Western Ghats. Forget the birds and bees, who wants to vote if they are going to lose their land?

Every Vote Counts

The Election Commission has to often reach out to voters in remote areas. A snapshot of electors in the 2009 elections from some of India’s remote polling booths:

Unusual Vehicles Used To Reach The Last Mile

AAP Menu

What was on offer at the Rs 20,000-per-person fundraising dinner on Mar 15 at The Capitol, Bangalore?

Digital Divide

• 10 “10 Numbri” —A charge thrown by Modi at the Gandhis
• Rs 60K The rent for Arvind Kejriwal’s official CM bungalow that he is yet to vacate
• 56 inches The reported size of Modi’s chest, apparently a prerequisite to develop a state like Gujarat
• 206 The seats Congress won in 2009, a figure Rahul Gandhi claims his party will better this summer
• Rs 10 Shazia Ilmi’s challenge to her Congress rival in Ghaziabad Raj Babbar: feed her and her supporters for that amount. It comes after Babbar said Rs 12 and Rs 5 were enough to feed one in Mumbai and Delhi respectively
• Rs 2.4 lakh Highest bid offered for a fundraising dinner date with Narendra Modi in Delhi
• 2k Number of people Mamata Banerjee’s TMC managed to round up for her rally at Ramlila maidan ...due to which Anna Hazare reportedly backed out

“We are not in politics. Our job is not to chant ‘NaMo, NaMo’.”

Mohan Bhagwat, RSS
The RSS sarsanghchalak after being hounded by reporters for a comment on Narendra Modi