Wednesday, March 5, 2014

2014 Campaign turning into BJP vs AAP Contest?

Note:Within minutes of the announcement of election schedule for the 16th Lok Sabha elections, AAP seems to have stolen the thunder and demonstrated that 2014 elections is a context between BJP and AAP.   The workers of both the parties were on the streets in Gujarat, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh clashed with each other and shouted slogans. The clash began after Kejriwal was detained by Gujarat Police as he began a four-day tour to “assess” development in Gujarat. At his third stop at Radhanpur in Patan district, the police took him to police station for an alleged violation of the model code of conduct amidst Kejriwal's demand to see official papers regarding the alleged violation. 
AAP supporters staged a dharna outside the police station. Kejriwal left after about half an hour in an open jeep along with his supporters. Upon release Kejriwal said, "My detention shows that Narendra Modi is rattled by my presence. Modi is anti-farmer and anti-common man. The only development in Gujarat has been for the Adanis and the Ambanis." AAP is raising the issues which were raised by Kanu Kalsariya. After the incident Gujarat Police stands exposed for being partisan. They are claiming that they only requested him and his  supporters help them deal with a massive traffic jam. Kejriwal's detention in Gujarat backfired and BJP appears cornered. BJP headquarters all over the country will now have to be wary of AAP supporters who are ready for a pitched electoral battle. 
Gopal Krishna
Mr Governance vs Mr Anarchy
Allegation news is having a field day as AAP’s Lok Sabha campaign gets into stride. And unsettling the front runner campaigning across the country. Kejriwal is brilliant at countering the print media advantage his rivals have, says SEVANTI NINAN. PIX: AAP-BJP activists clash in Delhi
Posted/Updated Thursday, Mar 06 10:52:47, 2014
TALKING MEDIA
Sevanti Ninan
Winning in politics isn’t about likeability. Or is it?
Mr Governance is up against Mr Anarchy. One is trying too hard. The other seems to not be trying hard enough, chucking up responsibility given, and explaining it away with a toothsome grin. “We got as far as we could with 28 seats. When we get 40, we will do more.”
Television is kinder to Arvind Kejriwal than it is to Narendra Modi or Rahul Gandhi. An intimate medium is right for a man who is not larger than life, but quite the opposite, a muffler wrapped version of RK Laxman’s common man. While neither of the other two contenders give interviews (except for Rahul Gandhi’s singular missed opportunity), he gives several a day. He keeps his cool, gives reasonable answers, and is sombre and chirpy by turn. It is a sensible strategy-- he does not have access to funds for print media advertising the same way that the mainstream parties with access to government budgets do.
In fact he is brilliant at countering that. What will you read first—a full-page Gujarat government or central government advertisement, or the day’s headlines sparked by a tantalising allegation that Mr Anarchy has lobbed into the public sphere? Allegation news is having a field day as the Aam Aadmi Party’s Lok Sabha campaign gets into stride. And unsettling the front runner campaigning across the country.  
What do their media encounters tell us about these men? Narendra Modi hasn’t put himself in the hands of an interviewer yet, maybe he is still too paranoid to do that. So the alternative is demagoguery at the hustings, a barb a day followed by a promise a day. And huge ads labouring an obvious point: “Government’s only Religion-India First. Government’s only Holy Book-The Constitution. Government’s only Worship-Betterment of 125 crore Indians.”  Etc, etc.
For all his assiduous social media positioning, Modi  backed out of an Internet-TV townhall meeting sponsored by Facebook, while Arvind, as anchor Madhu Trehan kept calling him, went, enjoyed himself, explained himself. Why did Modi back out? He made demands we could not meet said Newslaundry, but wouldn’t tell a curious Kejriwal what these were. And you couldn’t help wondering, had Modi really consented to appear on a platform where NDTV was a partner? After all those snide cracks about secular tigers (a reference to NDTV’s save the tiger campaign) and communal lions made on a rival channel?
You don’t hear Kejriwal woo his audience through unlikely pitches. He isn’t trying to be a Dalit among Dalits, or an Arunachali among Arunachalis, sporting tribal headgear that looks a trifle misplaced. If he went to West Bengal and talked about Renaissance and Vivekananda he would sound odd, to say the least. So he leaves that to Narendra Bhai and focuses on his more mundane pitch: India has first class people with third class governance. “Yes I am an anarchist for all those people who are misusing the system”, he told the BBC. “I am doing my duty getting all the good people in this country together.”
His take on Kashmir is artless: “If  Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh are an integral  part of India, then obviously the Kashmiris and people living in Arunchal Pradesh are also an integral part of India. It is not just the land mass. Hame inka dil jeetna padega. (We have to win hearts.) You don’t do that with guns.”  
Modi’s take is a more laboured one. “We have heard from the Ramayan about the jari buti (medicinal herbs) in the Himalayas. Jammu and Kashmir is a treasure trove of these.” He then goes on to how these herbs can give the youth jobs, how tourism needs to be restored, how the film industry’s 100th year should have been celebrated here, where so many films used to be shot in earlier years. Should there not be a film institute here? And so on.
But sometimes Modi manages a simple take too. Last year when he went to Hyderabad he said, “Four lakh Telugus in my state live pyaar se (in harmony). So why can’t Telengana walas and Andhra walas live with each other in love and harmony?” Rahul Gandhi, poor man, is so busy practising forceful delivery that such lines do not roll off his tongue.
In some ways Kejriwal is the most happily placed in the run up to these elections, because he has little baggage. No party eminences to mention before he gets going at a rally, no riots to defend. Nor he is trying to get to 272 seats, just a fraction of that number will serve to make him count. He can be himself—the BBC called him a politician with a hole in his sweater, while increasingly Modi dresses for his rallies like he has a stylist working on his appearance.
Kejriwal is enjoying unsettling the big guys. Land up in Gujarat to study good governance there, hold a meeting under a tree in Ahmedabad, and get into trouble with the police thereafter. Make enough noise to steal Mr Front Runner’s thunder, just for a bit.

http://www.thehoot.org/web/Mr-Governance-vs-Mr-Anarchy/7346-1-1-10-true.html

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