Leaders and their offerings

Has Arvind Kejriwal pulled off the biggest coup in recent history or has he been carefully trapped into exposing his shortcomings The former chief minister of Delhi now evidently fancies himself as prime minister of India mdash and why not Everyone else has thrown his or her hat into the ring Out here in Tamil Nadu where I am writing this you cannot see the trees or the people for the giant posters hoardings buntings banners billboards featuring J Jayalalithaa She is not quite the chief minister of this state so much as monarch of the region A visit to a village home saw the owners bringing out a procession of fans blenders grinders laptops all with Ammarsquos beauteous face on themEgo wars Kejriwalrsquos sense of self is extraordinary and despite his muffler cough and Wagon R he can match Jayalalithaa Modi and even Mayawati when it comes to egoA taxi driver in Coimbatore mdash the repository of all wisdom for visiting journalists mdash felt that Amma might make a better chief minister than prime minister but perhaps he was already feeling the pangs of possible separation anxietyImagine free laptops all aroundCan Kejriwal top that Well perhaps He will deliver free electricity and free water And maybe send the bill to Reliance or failing that at least to Mukesh AmbaniThen therersquos Mamata Banerjee She could promise change mdash like change in your pockets with whateverrsquos leftover after paying for all that free electricity water the laptops blenders grinders and whatever else The Mamata Banerjee idea of lsquoporibortonrsquo is a notional philosophical thing which only a Bengali or someone attuned to that thought process might fully understand The way Bengal thought that the Left was really bringing social progress and development for the last decade of its 300 odd years in power It can be seductive and running costs are rather low Long before Kejriwal decided life revolved around his small blue Wagon R car Mamata Banerjee was running around Bengal in her rubber chappalsThen of course therersquos the greatest of them all Narendra Modi He offers well himself What more after all can anyone else want He sees a glass that is halfempty as halffull a novel notion absolutely no one else had ever thought of before He has switched Shyama Prasad Mukherjee with Shyamaji Krishna Varma He has stuck Chandragupta Maurya into the Gupta dynasty And he has also decided that he knew better than China how much China spends on education And perhaps he does He is Narendra Modi after allBut to get back to the beginning I get the feeling that Kejriwal might beat them all He is without doubt one of the canniest political thinkers we have met in recent times His sense of self is extraordinary and despite his muffler cough and Wagon R he can match Jayalalithaa Modi and even Mayawati when it comes to ego Therersquos a possibility that he has been outmanoeuvred as far as the Delhi state government is concerned but he seems to know better how to tap the latent anger in India than the major partiesUnfortunately it is symbols that we are left with Kejriwalrsquos symbols are the most deviously clever and perfectly lsquoaam aadmirsquo Modi just relies on himself Jayalalithaa is the generous provider mdash you see a fan swirling around with her face on it long enough and you must get hypnotised But a muffler a cough and a Wagon R mdash now anyone can relate to that You donrsquot need a foreign PR agency to conjure those up for youSome might feel that Kejriwalrsquos little sortie into governance will work against him mdash since there was more drama than action in the last couple of months But he will definitely keep blaming everyone else for his woes and who can blame him The other parties have all had their shots at power and we know how well theyrsquove done for themselvesThe other parties are scampering around trying to organise themselves for the fallout of the next general electionThe sure winners and sure losses are in jeopardy And for all you know wersquore all staring a gigantic broom in the face What do you thinkRanjona Banerji is a senior journalistYou can follow her on twitter ranjona