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Battle Ready
Travelling
with Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi
on the Guarav Yatra and visiting Congress leader Shankersinh Vaghela,
India Today Associate Editor Ashok Malik reports on an engrossing battle
that may well end up as the political story of the year.
As
anybody who's lives in Delhi will tell you, easy-flowing
traffic has long ceased to be one of the Indian capital's attirbutes.
The first thing you notice on reaching Ahmedabad is that the roads are
smooth. As you drive across Gujarat, you discover that the network of
national and state highways ensures journeys that are even smoother. A
political rath yatra,
if such a phenomenon should exist at all, is best suited to
Gujarat then.
Not surprisingly,
Gujarat is supposed to have fathered the
"modern political yatra". In 1987, the year of the worst drought
in 20th century India—or so the met office claimed -- Shankarsinh
Vaghela, then state BJP chief, set off a journey labelled the Nyay (Justice)
Yatra and aimed at exposing the ruling Congress' neglect of the farming
community. The yatra was apparently the brainchild of Narendra Modi, then
an emerging RSS-BJP backroom boy and evidently still on talking terms
with Vaghela. Today Modi is the state's chief minister and the BJP's chief
mascot. Vaghela is state Congress president and his bitter rival. The
two are now
on abusing terms and worse. These days they're chasing each other arojnd
Gujarat—occasionally pre-empting the other in reaching a particularly
coveted location. When Modi announced he was going to the Bhathliji Maharaj
temple, Vaghhela made sure he got there earlier. If Vaghela reached the
Tarnetar Shiv temple on September 10, you could be certain Modi would
be there the following there.
The cat and
mouse game stems from Modi's decision to undertake his Gaurav Yatra. A
staggered, weekends-only political campaign, the yatra sees Modi leaving
the state capital, Gandhinagar, every Saturday and coming back on Monday
evening. In between he visits various parts of Gujarat on a Swaraj Mazda
vehicle fitted with a hydraulic device. As the yatra reaches one of its
50 odd stops each day—some of Modi's speeches are only tthree or
four minutes long—the canopy—like
structure on its roof rises vertically. Hey presto! Modi appears to popular
acclaim and many oohs and aahs. The van was originally devised for Parkash
Singh Badal, the Akali leader, during the elections in Punjab earlier
this year. Badal had broken his leg
and was lifted up strapped onto a chair. Modi uses it to prance
around.
When he's
not doing that, the chief minister is catching up- with
official work—messages from the state secretariat are relayed to
him now and then—talking on the cell phone, relaxing on the bed the
van comes with, grabbing biscuits and fruit. The big meal of the day comes
in the evening; or later. On September 8, the first day of the yatra,
Modi reached Himmatnagar town at 1.45 am. His well-attended public meeting
there got over close to 3.00 in the morning. No wonder he makes sure he's
travelling comfortably.
Equally particular
about the frugal creature comforts that are
an itinerant polician's lot is Vaghela. A connoisseur of cars, he's
just bought himself an Octavia Skoda, with an engine that cools as fast
as its master tells stories. Modi is quiet and takes his time to open
out. Vaghela is a born teller of tales. When he's onto a good story he
lets nothing come in the way, not even, informed sources have it, facts.
Unlike the vegetarian Modi, Vaghela loves mutton—he says he cooks
a mean curry. On the road, he restricts himself to roasted peanuts, which
he as he confessed to this correspondent on the journey from Tarnetar
to Ahmedabad, were impossible to resist. For a man who successfully resisted
L.K. Advani, A.B. Vajpayee and the rest of the BJP in the famous
rebellion of 1995, that's some statement. At a highway dhaba in Limbdi
though, he helped himself to some cheese sandwiches.
Wonder how politicians do it. While with Modi, I ate most of his
biscuits. While with Vaghela, I made sure he bought me a Saurashtrian
thali with extra helpings. With limited diets are the stuff of politics,
count me out.
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