Anna Hazare is on fast at Jantar Mantar road. He is 73. Somewhere nearby Rahul Gandhi is behind a steel curtain. He is 37. He has an intention of gathering unequivocal support of youth. He came to Maharashtra for that. Befriended a few local youth labeled with parental fame and fortune, but unknown to Maharashtra. The faces don’t have state wide recognition. He went to Bihar on his mission with all the central support. He fell flat on his nose.
His shrewd, intentional brigade vociferates, he is a youth icon!
All this is going on as a prelude to promote him as a future Prime Minister.
The 73 year old Anna Hazare with the help of hardly three persons gathers an all India youth support. This definitely would dishearten Rahul Gandhi and his publicity strategists. The brigade maligning Anna Hazare is let loose. He doesn’t have courage or courtesy to go and meet AH openly.
What kind of leadership game is this?
Say, perchance RG meets AH. What a magic it will make, he can’t infer, nor his advisers, invisible behind curtain.
I bet half of the open supporters, pan India, of Anna Hazare would empathize with RG. In fact, the reverse. He should empathize with the youth in millions.
The publicity men behind curtain are repeating the game plan played at the time of his father Rajiv Gandhi’s promotion to the post.
In the process they are forgetting that they have gotten old though continually harping about youth.
There is not a sage visible among or around.
By making a chief minister wait for two hours under a tree and spend half of his own day wasting in camouflaging ShivSena, if he feels he has climbed a few steps of leadership ladder then he is living in his imaginary world.
There is a possibility that if the onslaught of the movement against corruption continues, the impending elections in the four states would make a penchant for failure in him, maybe, as he doesn’t express himself well.
Shouldn’t the would-be leader of the nation express himself openly at the time of crisis instead of hiding in a cave?
It is a lesson from a veteran of Ralegan Siddhi that half a million villages far from Janpath could be influenced by a simple and honest act. The attitude of shunning every thing even, hollow talks without substance or waving hands to cricket fans sitting among a select bunch of aam aadmi doesn’t. At least expressions exhibiting understanding cricket could have worked. Feigning in the cricket field or stadium is no easy game to play especially before cricket crazy billion Indians, future leaders have to note.
In Shataranj Ke Khiladi of Satyajit Ray, one of the Chess players, Mirza says to Mir at the end, we would play at home after nightfall. We need darkness to hide our faces.
The daytime sham Chess, deliberately prolonged, will go on though, pertaining to their old habit, forgetting the moves are being done in front of fasting Anna Hazare, as if to lose their king.
- DevikaRani Kamath
