victory, defeat and democracy

Done with the campaign trail with Jyotiraditya Scindia in Guna. He is going to win anyways. The beauty of democracy is that even when you know that the person against whom you are contesting an election is going to win, you still contest. Why? When you know that you are going to loose why contest at the first place?

Well my take is--and that is why I call it the beauty of democracy--that the meaning of victory is different for every contestant. In Guna If Jyotiraditya Scindia manages to increase his victory margin the victory would have a different meaning. In the 2002 by-election he had won by over 4.5 lakh votes but that time he was riding high on a sympathy wave after his father's death in a plane crash. Two years later in the 2004 general elections his margin got reduced to around 80,000 votes. Now if the BJP candiddate Narottam Mishra manges to reduce Scindia's victory margin to less than 50,000 his defeat would be no less than Scindia's victory.

But at the end of the day Jyotiraditya Scindia will represent Guna in Parliament. And he should. Whatever his victory margin.

'pappu pass ho gaya'

Digvijay Singh after ceding power to the BJP in Madhya Pradesh rarely came to the state Vidhan Sabha but once when he did come, it turned out to be a major ridicule session for Shivraj Singh Chauhan. Chauhan had just taken over from Babu Lal Gaur as the state chief minister and his humility was taken for lack of confidence. Singh started by calling Chauhan a ‘baccha chor’(Child lifter). Those were the times when Uma Bharti used to call the government as her child that had been snatched away from her. Digvijay during that ridicule speech of his also called Shivraj Singh “Pappu” and prophesied that this ‘Pappu’ will never pass. Chauhan at that moment did not react and just smiled back to Digvijay Singh as the speaker expunged his remarks from the proceedings.
So when Amitabh Bachhan was selling chocolates through his ‘Pappu pass ho gaya campaign’ many in Madhya Pradesh including top bureaucrats were selling an idea of the return of the Congress party to power by running a ‘pappu fail ho gaya campaign’. Such was the intensity of this campaign that Chauhan had to literally ask his chief secretary to get off his plane after he lost control over his tongue. This bureaucrat who is understood to be very close to Digvijay Singh got a posting for himself in Delhi within a month and once again it was ‘pappu who failed’.
Chauhan fought and got a second consecutive term for the BJP in Madhya Pradesh as he presented his three year performance alongside 10 years of the man who first called him ‘Pappu’. The people of Madhya Pradesh chose simplicity and humility over intrigue and arrogance. The story is likely to repeat in the Parliamentary polls as well.
April 4 is the last day of filing nomination for the first phase in MP and 12 hours before the expiry of this deadline the Congress has not been able to decide its candidate for the Hoshangabad Parliamentary seat. This is the seat from where state Congress president Suresh Pachori had made up his mind to contest. His was the only name in the panel but he chickened out once he was reportedly given an option of appointing a care taker state president if he were to contest elections.
So the Congress is now left with only a couple of safe seats in Madhya Pradesh. You ask a Congressman to mark the seats where a fight is in the offing or the seats from where the Congress is sure to win, chances are that he would start talking about seats in states like UP and Bihar where the party will loose the deposit.
In the Manmohan Singh led UPA government there were four ministers from Madhya Pradesh. The Congress strength in the Lok Sabha from the state was also four till Arun Yadav won a by election from Khargone. Arjun Singh and Suresh Pachori are not contesting election and the only seats where the Congress appears to be comfortable are those of ministers Kamal Nath and Kanti Lal Bhuria. Jyotiraditya Scindia who was inducted into the ministry after Pachori was sent as state president is another Congress star from Guna but here again the BJP won seven of the eight Vidhan Sabha seats that fall in this constituency.
For the BJP there is just one star--the man christened ‘Pappu’ by Digvijay Singh—and he is leaving no stone unturned in trying for a BJP victory. Sushma Swaraj the other BJP stalwart and a sure shot minister if the BJP forms a government is contesting from Vidisha, the constituency that was represented by ‘Pappu’ five time in a row. You take humility as lack of confidence and you pay the price. The Congress way.

Of success,truth, facts and failure

Truth like success is often a mirage that is better viewed from a distance. The closer you go to it, the more susceptible you become to realizing the ‘truth’ that lurks in the shadows of what you perceived to be the truth. The truth in the shadows is often at complete variance with the truth viewed from a distance.
Same goes for success. This is a mirage that you slowly approach in a step by step manner only to realize at the last step that it was not what you were striving for. You still don’t know what you are striving for and thus starts another quest for success only to end in a similar way.
So is there anything called success or truth?
If we approach truth through what we call a ‘lie’ or something which is not a ‘fact’ can it take us anywhere near truth?
Similarly if we approach success through what we call a ‘failure’ can it take us anywhere near success?
The answer is both yes and no.
Yes because anything that is not a fact does not exist and anything that is not failure is success. The degree of course can vary. The realization of this degree is something that can clear the mirage mentioned in the beginning.
And no because there is nothing called complete success or absolute truth.