Election Diary: Abhinandan on a sari; NDA embarrassed by media and much more

Wing Commander Vardhaman on a Sari?

India’s hero, who is said to have shot down a F-16 fighter plane of the Pakistan Air Force last month before his Mig-21 was hit, forcing him to eject and land in Pakistani territory, in a sari? The Wing Commander, who spent two days in Pakistani custody before being returned to India, is the stuff of legends and his poise, grace and stoicism while in custody has made Indians proud. It, therefore, should not have come as a surprise to find his image, along with bombs, planes and pine trees, leaving nothing to imagination, on saris printed by an entrepreneur in, where else, Surat! No prizes for guessing who is going to buy the saris and distribute them and among whom or when!

Statistics and the EC

The Modi government is known to be statistically challenged. It has tied itself in knots over GDP figures, agriculture growth, employment, manufacturing and so on. But the Election Commission of India claims to rely on the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) and waiting for a recommendation from the ISI before deciding on the number of polling booths where votes recorded by EVM machines will be matched with VVPAT (Voter Verifiable Paper Trail). This Lok Sabha election will be the first when all booths will have VVPAT machines in accordance with the direction of the Supreme Court. And the Opposition has demanded that the audit be conducted in at least half the booths in every constituency. This demand has also been supported by 75 senior retired bureaucrats as well. But while ECI waits for the ISI report, it needs to answer whether it was the ISI which had recommended such audit in one booth in every Assembly constituency? With each Assembly constituency having 220 or more booths, this is a statistically insignificant sample amounting to less than half%.

MIG: Made in India since 1963

In the wake of the aerial dogfight late last month between Pakistani F-16s and Indian MIG-21, Prime Minister Narendra Modi publicly lamented that things would have been different if India had the Rafale jets. The PM’s statement was widely interpreted as an expression of lack of faith in the IAF and its fighter jets. Coming as it did in the wake of much chest thumping over the Indian MIG-21 downing a Pakistani F-16, the statement was curious. The Opposition was also quick to point out that had the Modi government stuck to the UPA’s acquisition plan, the first Rafale jets would have been delivered in 2018. The PM was also asked why he on his own reduced the supply order for Rafale jets from 126 to 36.

Even as the controversy raged, a giant hoarding appeared at the exit of Bangalore International Airport last week. On the top left hand corner were emblazoned the words, “MIG: MAKES IN INDIA SINCE 1963”. At the bottom right hand corner were some flowers blooming. And besides an image of the plane, there was nothing to indicate who had put up the hoarding. But employees of HAL which was unceremoniously dropped by the Government from the Rafale deal, are elated. “Whoever put it up, it has come at the right time,” an employee was quoted as saying. With union ministers Nirmala Sitharaman and MoS at the MEA General (Rtd) V.K. Singh publicly undermining HAL, the employees point out that the PSU has manufactured over 4,500 planes and has been manufacturing and upgrading the MIG since 1963, long before Narendra Modi’s much vaunted ‘Make In India’. The hoarding, by all reckoning, is becoming an election issue along with HAL.

Party for women with reservation for men

Kavuri Lavanya from Andhra Pradesh left India 20 years ago and has now settled down in London as a management consultant. She last week launched a political party for women at Vijaywada and named it ‘Nari Shakthi’. The party, she declared, would reserve 30% of the seats it contests for men. “We will not wait for a bill,” she said in a dig at the Women’s Reservation Bill pending for long in Parliament. Women, she says, have been reduced to a vote bank and continue to be denied justice, equality and empowerment.

Media spare NDA embarrassment again

Three controversies dogged the NDA’s Sankalp Rally at Patna last Sunday. Nobody from the ruling JD(U) and BJP in the state went to receive the dead body of a CRPF jawan, Pintu Singh, killed in Kashmir at the Patna airport in the morning. Poll strategist and JD(U) Vice President Prashant Kishor did some damage control by tweeting that it was indeed a lapse. A steady drizzle played spoilsport and the NDA rally apparently did not attract as many people as organisers had expected, prompting Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Twitter handle to derisively say that the crowd that more people used to throng to see Lalu Yadav when he stopped to have paan (betel leaf). But the most embarrassing by far was a video clip of a woman, with her midriff bared, gyrating to entertain people who had arrived for the rally. There was predictable outrage with people pointing out that the ‘vulgar’ dance exposed the BJP and its faux sympathy for martyrs. The ‘national’ media, not surprisingly, blacked out all the three discordant notes.