National media's great obsession with Delhi's Arvind Kejriwal-Kiran Bedi polls
Two points at the outset: first, I am a politics junkie and elections get my adrenaline flowing. Second, like all Baombaywallahs, I view Delhi with mixed feelings - I envy its infrastructure, its excellent food scene and its winter, but cannot totally shed off my conviction that it is an overgrown village. Old time prejudices, I guess.
Even so, while acknowledging its importance as the country's capital, I am finding it very difficult to suppress several yawns at the wall-to-wall coverage of its elections. Turn on a television channel, pick up a newspaper, log on to Twitter, and all one can read about is the Delhi elections. Yes, I get it that it is a battle between Kiran Bedi and Arvind Kejriwal, but why that should matter to someone sitting outside the NCR (itself an acronym that is of no interest to others), is not fully explained. Both came to prominence during the Jan Lokpal agitation, a classic case of media overkill itself, and since then their every move has been tracked. Kejriwal has kept himself in the news by first forming a party, then a government in Delhi, then his dharna, then dramatically resigning and then losing handsomely against Narendra Modi in Varanasi. One would have thought that had put paid to his political ambitions, but there he is, back on the channels, in his new avatar as a smiling politician. Kiran Bedi was in serious danger of oblivion but clearly you can't put a good opportunist down. She is now the BJP's contender for the CM's job and blithely ignoring all those digs about her old tweets against the BJP.
Yes we also get that the BJP is in danger of losing this election, which would dent the invincible image of Narendra Modi, so the Bedi has been made the party's face - in detective fiction, she would be called a patsy. But the rewards are so lucrative - a possible chief ministership of a city whose traffic she managed at one time - that it is all worth it.
But in the end, what does the Delhi election amount to? The Delhi government does not even have control over its police, which is what drove Kejriwal to sleep on the pavement last year. This makes it just a little more than a municipality, and here too, it competes with other bodies which actually manage civic affairs. And do elections to municipal corporations get national coverage?
Earlier this week, the Mumbai edition of a pink paper had a full page on the problems faced by Delhi. Interesting enough, but would a Delhi paper have a full page on say, Calcutta or Chennai? Don't other states have turncoats? We have heard a lot about sundry local politicians, ranging from Jagdish Mukhi to Amarinder Singh Lovely - I am sure not one Delhi reader knows who the mayor of Mumbai or Hyderabad is. As for Shazia Ilmi, she gets the kind of publicity that even Jayalalithaa doesn't.
The "national" media is mainly headquartered in Delhi, and quite naturally it is obsessed with goings-on in its own backyard. The Delhi hothouse, composed of the politicians, bureaucrats, fixers, diplomats and the media is a world of its own. The environment is strictly controlled to ensure that nothing from outside gets in. Naturally, perspective tends to get skewed.
Mustn't grumble however, as they say. One must admit it is great entertainment all round. All those Twitter jokes and hashtags keep one amused. Moreover, the results, if not the minute of the elections, will matter. Most of all, Kiran Bedi's constant U-turns do remind us that Delhi is, for all its development and flyovers, still a city of golchakkars.