Going by numbers, it was not a huge rally; going by
ostentatiousness, it had none of the usual trappings of a noteworthy rally: no
truck, no DJ-style loudspeakers, no long line of impressive cars or roaring motorcycles, no glamour
quotient in the form of cricket or film stars and no security. There was no
pilot car and the lone police Gypsy quietly followed the procession of a couple
of small cars and a dozen of autorickshaws and hundreds of foot soldiers.
Medha Patkar sat and waved and sometimes conversed with the
public on the way as the rally moved at a less than moderate pace, thanks
mainly to the narrowness of the lanes and bylanes of Shivaji Nagar; a poor, crowded,
dirt-covered and disintegrating neighbourhood in the far Eastern Mumbai suburb of
Govandi. It was a typically hot and sultry late April afternoon and she had no
shade to protect her head or her face.
It was the most spectacular rally I have seen in the current
election campaigning because it had the
one ingredient such rallies yearn to stimulate : public participation. It was their
rally. They showered petals on her from the squat rooftops of the makeshift shanties,
they offered her cold drinks and they happily covered their heads with the Aam
Adami white Gandhi caps the participants in the rally offered. I was among the
onlookers whom the volunteers approached
with AAP pamphlets. I took one and declined the next one. The fellow admonished
me: Ye mera hai; maine khud likha hai - this is mine, I have myself penned it. So
I read it. Whereas Medha's pamphlet listed the logical reasons why one should
vote for AAP, this man's personal appeal was full of emotion. It described how
the dawn and the noon and the night all appealed to him to go and make common
cause with a party, a movement which laboured to put the common man in the
saddle.
The volunteers chanted, "Nikalo ab makanonse, Jung lado
beimanonse" (Come out of your abodes and join the fight against the
dishonest ones); "Chunav nahin chunauti hai, party nahin, andolan
hai" {It is not an election, it is a challenge; it is not a (political)
party, it is a crusade} . The crowds joined in enthusiastically. Young men and
women, 'senior citizens' and the middle-aged ones, all smiled back to a tired,
yet trim Medha. She was a beacon of hope to them; yet there was no hysteria, no
manic extortion and no arrogance among the rallyists or among the public
though there was near unanimity of support for her and her party. As she moved,
they waved back to her and then turned to one another, saying, "Won't it
be great if she is elected?"
This election is ostensibly being fought on the agenda of
development and development is the one thing each one of the residents of
Shivaji Nagar aspires. Yet, the loud proponents of development and these
representatives of the great Indian masses are not talking about the same
thing. Why? Why should those who are desperately in need of development be disillusioned
with the prevailing model of development?
Oh, did I mention that most of them were Muslims? It escaped
me then, just as it escaped them too.
