Will Nandan Nilekani win south Bangalore?
He should, but the answer may not be as simple as that
Though it was officially announced only recently, it has been India’s worst-kept secret for quite some time that Nandan Nilekani would stand on the Congress ticket from south Bangalore. In fact, for the last few months, rumours have been swirling around that the BJP was trying to field former Indian cricket captain Anil Kumble against the co-founder of Infosys Ltd and the chief of the Aadhaar unique identity scheme. In the end, BJP decided to go with its general secretary—and tried and tested—Ananth Kumar.
Ananth Kumar has won the south Bangalore seat five times in a row. But Nandan Nilekani is one of the biggest living heroes of Bangalore—a living legend, an inspirational figure for at least two generations of Bangaloreans, and with an impeccable record of business and financial honesty. Even before he entered government, he had engaged himself in Bangalore’s civic and infrastructure affairs and had led the Bangalore Agenda Task Force initiative, a partnership between citizens, corporate entities and government agencies. There are few people perhaps as respected as Nilekani in the city.
Or is it among only the city’s middle class?
This is the question I have been asking several of my South Bangalorean friends over the last few days. One of them is someone who worked long and closely with Nilekani in his Infosys days. My friend has also been drawn in recent times to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). He travelled to Delhi and spent several days with Arvind Kejriwal before the Delhi assembly elections. He has also been active on social media, defending AAP and its activities. But he is going to actively campaign for Nandan. “I would put my ideology second to wanting to see good, capable men getting into Indian politics," he told me. But he is worried, even though Nilekani has repeatedly appeared on television and refused to even consider the possibility that he could lose.
My friend is worried because he says he honestly doesn’t know how well Nilekani is known among the lower-income voters in the constituency. In addition, he says, the typical Bangalore techie, for whom Nilekani has always been a role model, has been a BJP voter. Some of them may feel disappointed that Nilekani chose to contest for the Congress. There is also the AAP, which saw considerable support from young educated Bangaloreans, at least in the initial days. Has that support eroded after the Delhi government experiment, and if so, by how much? How much will the AAP cut into Nilekani’s votes?
This doubt is exemplified in my friend’s own home. His wife is firmly committed to voting for AAP. It’s a house divided, and there could be many such households in south Bangalore, which would have unquestioningly voted for Nilekani, if the AAP hadn’t turned up.
But BJP welcoming back former Karnataka chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa—who had faced stacks of charges of corruption—into its fold has also muddied the waters. BJP lost the last assembly elections principally on these corruption issues. However, another friend told me that though disgraced, Yeddyurappa’s rebel party did draw some votes, enough to queer the pitch for BJP in several assembly constituencies, including the ones that make up the south Bangalore Lok Sabha seat. Now, the outcast is back, and presumably, his votes too. But a lot has happened in the meantime. This friend of mine, who runs a software firm, conducted an informal poll among some of his young staffers. A strange result emerged. They overwhelmingly supported Narendra Modi, but their overall impression of the BJP in Karnataka was distinctly negative: the alleged untrammelled corruption in Yeddyurappa’s government is still fresh in memory. And they are confused who they are going to vote for.
The South seats of our metros—Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore—are seen as constituencies packed with rich and middle-class voters. As such, it should be a walkover for Nilekani. But one must remember that in the 1999 general elections, Manmohan Singh lost from South Delhi. In an interview during his poll campaign, Singh had told me the South Delhi-type voter had gained the most among all demographic groups from his economic reforms. If he lost from here, there was something wrong with the electorate, not with him. But he did lose. There could have been several reasons for that, and one of them I personally experienced. As we drove to Singh’s residence, it turned out that my driver—a South Delhi voter—had never heard of Singh, but could recognise the nameplates on several houses along the way, like that of Prakash Singh Badal. No South metro seat consists entirely of well-off people. In fact, they may actually form a minority—a very visible one, but a minority nonetheless.
Nandan Nilekani is quite simply one of the most intelligent people I have ever met in my life. He is also a very persuasive man: to personally get each and every chief minister in the country to buy into the Aadhaar scheme was a tremendous feat of selling, marketing, campaigning and conviction. And after 25 years of a brilliant entrepreneurial and corporate life, he has now spent five years watching politics and governance from close quarters. As he himself says, he is a very fast learner and a problem-solver. Will that be enough to win a Lok Sabha seat? I certainly hope so.
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