AS slogans of "Chaudhry Rita Singh ki jai; Yatnagar ki bahu ko vote do," rend the air, the lady in the open white Gypsy manages a feeble smile and a namaste. From the plush confines of her permanent suite at the Maurya Sheraton in Delhi, to the dusty lanes of Atoota village, 65 km away—where the entire village follows her jeep and pledge their support—Rita Singh, managing director of the Rs 1,000 crore M'esco Group, has traversed the distance with elan.
She surprised everybody when she got the Congress ticket for the Ghaziabad Lok Sabha constituency, but Singh has hit the ground running with a campaign far more aggressive and high-profile than any of her rivals in this industrial belt just outside Delhi. But then, the unexpected is expected from Singh. After all, who could have anticipated that this middle-class housewife would emerge a leading industrialist in less than two decades? However, as far as responses to queries go, Singh is firmly rooted in the mundane and the expected. Why the plunge into politics? "It's very sad that despite being a rich and fertile belt there has been virtually no development here. I simply wanted to make a difference."
Or, ask her about the three theories doing the rounds about how she managed the Congress ticket: one, that this is part-payment for the M'esco Airlines planes and helicopters the party is supposed to be using; two, she bought the ticket for Rs 1.5 crore; three, she is very close to Uttar Pradesh Congress chief Jitendra Prasada. "The party asked me to contest simply because they knew I had a desire to work for the people of Ghaziabad and its neighbouring villages," is her explanation. She makes it a point to tell voters that she could have entered Parliament through the Rajya Sabha any time she wanted to, and the only reason for her to contest the Lok Sabha elections is because she wants to work for them.
And in a way it's a homecoming for her (a point she emphasises relentlessly), for she is married to J.K. Singh, a Jat and a former Indian Air Force officer belonging to Yatnagar, a village in Ghaziabad district. At every rally, she stresses the fact that she is a daughter of the soil who's made it big thanks to her own hard work, and is now in a position to do good for the populace. "I've travelled in buses and tongas, sat in the mandi in the wee hours of the morning and there were occasions when I didn't even have two rupees in my pocket," she tells the audience. Her solid gold bracelet glitters in the early morning sun.
Active politics, she admits, has been a revelation. "It's been pretty tough. It's a totally different concept, but I understand people, their mentality and their problems, so I should manage." And what of her business interests? "My cellular phone is my only link with my business. But I am used to working 18 hours a day and I don't think I will find it difficult to juggle the two if I become an MP."
While her candidature was initially met with scepticism, the support she has raised has caught her rivals by surprise. Possibly they shouldn't have been. Being an industrialist herself, Singh has attracted the support of local industry. Then there's her Jat pedigree: she has been instantly titled 'Chaudhry Rita Singh' in the many Jat-dominated villages. She seems to have a fair amount of support among Muslims as well. But the Dalits, who constitute 30 per cent of the electorate, are giving her the jitters. From all reports, the Dalit vote will go to the JD. The sitting BJP MP doesn't seem to have much support. "We'll never return a sitting MP, because none of them has done anything for us," says Sadir Quereshi of Hapur, who is busy mobilising Muslim support for Singh. The facts seem to bear him out: no one has been re-elected from Ghaziabad in the three previous Lok Sabha elections.
