Mayawati Popularity: Has a very solid transferable Dalit base that she has built on with inclusion of Brahmins in UP. Poised to be an all-India force. |
Mayawati Popularity: Has a very solid transferable Dalit base that she has built on with inclusion of Brahmins in UP. Poised to be an all-India force. |
Narendra Modi Popularity: Very popular in home state. Trying to become a middle-class icon across India. But is despised by many, and feared by others in BJP and NDA. |
Naveen Patnaik Popularity: His popularity extends across social strata. This is because of his clean image. |
Jayalalitha Age: 60 Party: AIADMK *** "Wherever I go, I meet myself." |
A colourful personality, an important political force and a true autocrat, Jayalalitha has many more lives to live. Cho Ramaswamy, editor, Thuglak, says "she is authoritative, not authoritarian". Semantics apart, when in power, the woman they call Puratchi Thalaivi (revolutionary leader) does operate like an empress. On her birthday, loyalists would take out full-page ads describing her as the "Mother Goddess" and "Saviour of Tamil Nadu". One group of women devotees led by an MLA famously wore grass skirts to pray for the leader's long life. One of her ministers rolled on the ground outside a temple to bring her good luck. Jayalalitha seemed unmoved.
If anyone can outdo Jayalalitha in queenly demeanour, it is Mayawati, now serving her third and most decisive term as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. Says sociologist Ashis Nandy: "Mayawati has come up the very hard way, thrown up by a previously marginalised section of society and is now very autocratic. Someone like her has lost her private life to her public self. Her power is growing but she is not the sort of leader any alliance would trust unless they have no choice. She has to fight for everything. " And fighting she still is, despite being the CM. This month, full-page ads have begun to appear in national and local dailies across the country extolling the virtues and achievements of Mayawati and her BSP. Her prime ministerial ambitions are no secret and she is clearly in the midst of a systematic plan to expand her party's voteshare across the land.
Goddess of small things: Blessed are those who beseech Mayaji |
Narendra Modi, on the other hand, sees a diehard secularist in most English-language journalists. But he does make time for those who have proven their ideological or personal loyalty to him. Other than that, the man is a complete loner. He seeks people only for a purpose. An audience of businessmen so that he can hold forth on his "vision" for investment. A public rally where he can display his flair for rhetoric. Like the other solitary souls, there is no retinue of hangers-on, fixers, brothers, mothers, or children.
If Modi doesn't appear to be the least bit lonely, it is because he seems quite enamoured of himself. The more the number of men wearing Modi masks, the broader his grin at election rallies. He has taken the cult of personality to levels unimaginable in a party like the BJP. Even his national ambitions are of promoting Modi as being "bigger and tougher" than the BJP. His overriding nature does not allow him to treat colleagues as equals. A narcissist to the core, he inhabits his own universe even as he plans to conquer the world.
Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik is too well-bred to brag about himself or his success in politics. But he has displayed a ruthless streak in cutting down those who had tried to use him as a puppet or a mere figurehead for his legendary father, Biju Patnaik. Ruling a state for eight years when he does not speak the language must be difficult. Coming after leading the high life in Delhi and across the globe, he has become something of a hermit in Orissa. He lives in the family home quite alone except for the annual visit from his sister and mother. Today no one takes him lightly and has finally begun to ask: what makes Naveen tick?
By Saba Naqvi Bhaumik with Pushpa Iyengar in Chennai and Sharat Pradhan in Lucknow
Tags