Benefits of a Beer Campaign

THE MOST DANGEROUS politician in election time is the one who has given up hope but has not yet given up talking. They come into their own before the cameras. Due diligence of the tongue evaporates because there is no visible future, individual or collective, on the horizon, encouraging the overflow of innate or acquired stupidity. Phrases flow, untethered to sense and caution. Why not sit back and enjoy a break from speeches, go to favourite haunts inside or outside India for longer spells instead of jump-start visits? But nothing is more addictive in electoral politics than the sound of your own voice. Courtesy persuades me not to name names, but the disease is a syndrome, common across the political divide.

If candour was the primary qualification for votes, one undisputed winner would be Vanita Raut of the Akhil Bharatiya Manavata Paksha, who is contesting from Chandrapur in Maharashtra. She has promised beer bars in villages and either subsidised or free-imported whisky for the poor. You are doubtless looking at the story from the puritan and hence wrong perspective. This is not about alcohol. The poor have had access to alcohol ever since God planted trees that bless us with toddy. Nor is this about bribing voters. Promises and presents have been part of the game since man invented democracy. There used to be a formal term for it: rotten boroughs. Many boroughs are still rotten but we have all agreed to be polite these days. Vanita Raut’s message is about aspiration. If there can be beer bars in Mumbai, why not in the villages? I must check out the complete manifesto of the All India Humanitarian Party. It must be studded with bejewelled realism.

American author-adventurer Ernest Hemingway had a maxim about how men go broke—first gradually, and then suddenly. It works equally well for political parties, although sometimes the gradual slippage is so slow as to be imperceptible. But the crash is evident enough. Bengal’s invincible Marxists collapsed from Everest to the Bay of Bengal in a vertical descent, and are still to emerge from sea-sunk oblivion. Their cousins in Kerala were more sensible; they never flew too high, and were never shot down.

A quick look at political outfits teetering on the edge. Glitter-green Mamata Banerjee is being eroded by saffron. In Odisha, Naveen Patnaik has liquidity as long as Naveen Patnaik is in the game. DMK’s three-generation bank balance will see it through one last spin of the casino, but after this the Hemingway principle. The Senas of Maharashtra have spent far more than their returns on invested patriarchal goodwill, so it is a question of time; as it is for the clock on the Sharad Pawar wall. Lalu Prasad and AAP in sporadic geography seem to show some resilience, but only in regional elections. As for neither-regional-nor-quite-national Congress, it survives on deficit financing thanks possibly to some beneficial International Mentor Fund. What is common between Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Bengal, Odisha, Andhra, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Punjab? Vibrant regional parties have reduced Congress to an also-ran.

If in search of a surprise, watch Kerala, a state where the I.N.D.I.A. bloc has been partitioned by history. The BJP vote is rising; Congress is slipping; the Left is holding on firmly to its proletariat. Shifting dynamics in a triangular contest generally lead to the unexpected. On June 4, Congress might see red.

One political party which should be delighted at the arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is Congress. When his deputy Manish Sisodia was sent to the cooler, Congress publicly wondered when Kejriwal would follow. That has happened, so where are the celebrations?

What is my source for these revelations? We can check the records, which is tedious; or we can check a speech made by Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Monday, which is fun—and not because Monday was April 1. Vijayan was serious. He said, and I quote verbatim from a prominent national newspaper: “Congress played a key role in levelling corruption allegations linked to the AAP government’s liquor licence policy in Delhi that led ED to go after Arvind Kejriwal. When deputy CM Manish Sisodia was arrested Congress complained why Kejriwal was not being taken into custody.”

Vijayan was not shy about naming Rahul Gandhi, accusing the would-be Congress nominee for prime minister of contesting from Wayanad in Kerala because he wanted to weaken the Left rather than BJP. Point. You cannot weaken BJP where it is not strong. Rahul Gandhi’s natural political habitat is a patch in Uttar Pradesh. Let’s see what happens; but the mood in the anti-BJP camp is conditioned by existence rather than co-existence.

This has been and will continue to be a hot year for elections. Bangladesh. Indonesia. Russia. India. Britain. United States. That accounts for probably 80 per cent of the voting population of the world. (The Chinese have never held elections since the birth of Adam, so they can be excluded without qualms from this world.) So far, amidst the plentiful noise and occasional wit, the quotation of the season comes from British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has just said that he will announce an election date the moment people begin to “feel things are improving”.

So, British elections in 2028 then.

To balance out, a more memorable quotation from a British politician, that marvellously committed leftist-intellectual Labour leader Michael Foot. A good speech, he said, exposes the opposition’s weakness; a great one destroys its strengths.

About three decades ago, when Anglo-American civilisation was still feeling uppity, Hollywood made films about the decadence of the old Roman empire, if only to show sleaze on the screen in the name of censure. It might be time for Rome to make films about decadence in Britain. London’s Financial Times published a photograph recently of a party hosted by a cryptocurrency company called Copper at a five-star hotel where guests with lanyards picked up sushi from the bodies of live models in see-through suits. The invitation had promised a feast for all five senses. If the guests had any sixth sense, they would have sensed that someone with a camera would pass on the delectable photographs to a newspaper.

The chairman of Copper? Baron Hammond of Runnymede, a former chancellor of the British exchequer. Conservative, naturally. Well paid, obviously.

It is unsurprising that the British electorate is thoroughly fed up with the Conservatives, with opinion polls giving current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak 1 per cent chance of victory. The principal vote-loser is Sunak, whose claims to competence are looking very frayed, and whose behaviour is getting on voter nerves. A Tory member in a focus group put the dilemma in a very British nutshell, as reported in the Times of March 27: “It feels like we’ve got alcoholic parents. Everything’s crazy and then the next morning it’s suddenly ‘Sorry’ and ‘Let’s go and feed the ducks’. It’s not secure enough. You can’t help but love your alcoholic parents but you might want to go and live with your auntie for a bit.”

The name of this aunt is Labour.

It must have been guilt. Normally one opens a new book on purchase if only to check one’s decision to buy it. But getting Catherine Nixey’s Heresy: Jesus Christ and the Other Sons of God during Easter week seemed particularly heretical, even if the Kindle price was irresistible. The price of heresy always has been and always will be irresistible.

I left the book unopened and continued reading Spectator. The magazine has published a story about Tom Holland, a historian of Christianity and faith who has revelled in the contemporary ‘New Atheism’ popularised by Richard Dawkins and other irreverent authors of this cult. In December 2021, at the peak of Covid, Holland was diagnosed with cancer which demanded immediate surgery. With hospitals in disarray, Holland turned, inexplicably by his rationale, to desperate prayer, during a midnight mass. Within a few weeks the diagnosis was reversed. His mind still refuses to accept the notion of answered prayers, but his heart has clearly moved towards God. He is confused, which means that the human arrogance inherent in atheism is over. “God must have a sense of humour,” Holland said. True. God also has patience.

About The Author

MJ Akbar

MJ Akbar is the author of, among several titles, Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan. His latest book is Gandhi: A Life in Three Campaigns

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