Race for pink lips
Seasoned journalists look back at a pre-tech era when charismatic leaders and festival-like canvassing won votes
Since 1952, India has had 17 general elections. The 18th is underway — unfolding in seven phases. Over the years, the country has seen days of coalition politics and of absolute majority. Through it all, the election campaign has been a great uni er. Loud, colourful, and playing to the masses, politicians use every tool at their disposal to win over voters.
In the early 1980s, I remember N.T. Rama Rao, the founder of Telugu Desam Party, shifting his image from that of a matinee idol to a politician. He was one of the rst to customise a van — his old Chevrolet, which he named Chaitanya Ratham — to canvass. A far cry from the vanity vehicles that today’s politicians use (think Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Mohabbat ki Dukaan’ Volvo bus with its hydraulic lift), it was still a star attraction. Youngsters would throng the van, as there was talk that it was customised to include the amenities of a single-room apartment.
NTR would stop beside a village pond or tube well to have his bath. Rural folks who idolised him as Lord Rama and Krishna — the roles he played on the big screen — would prostrate before him, and perform ‘arathi’. He would oblige them and hand out dry fruits as prasadam. Then he would park his van in the village square for the night. It is said to have logged 75,000 km.
Things changed, however, in the late ’90s. The Election Commission of India’s new regulations coming into eect post T.N. Seshan, in 1996, meant that the carnival atmosphere slowly began seeping out of campaigns. Today, the Great Indian Democratic Festival is much more sanitised. The action has moved to social media, with every politician
Elections today are a far cry from what they used to be, says B. Kolappan. senior deputy editor, who has been covering elections for close to three decades, remembers a time when wall writing — reserving boundary walls to use as canvases for slogans and graiti — was an art, and elections were like festivals.
“The silence of villages would be shattered by megaphones atop Ambassador cars, announcing:
[Elders and mothers, poll your golden votes for us]’. No matter the political party, they would all start their campaign with the same words,” he reminisces. “As children in the early ’80s, we would chase after the slow-moving cars, equipped with a generator in the boot, raising dust in the streets of our village, Parakkai. The campaigner would punctuate his speech with snatches of film songs. The AIADMK would play songs from MGR’s movies, the Congress from Sivaji Ganesan’s; and the DMK from a specially-recorded collection in the voice of Nagore E.M. Hanifa.”
But the children, he says, were more interested in collecting the pamphlets. “They were printed on cheap paper in various colours; pink was our favourite. We would chew on them to stain our mouths pink. It was free lipstick! Then we would poke our tongues out to see the colour, and wait for the next car.”