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Campaign Trail/Ayaz Memon

Chidambaram is a man driven

Sabbath day mid-February is not particularly gratifying for Union Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram. After 10 days of hectic campaigning, he could do with a Sunday off. But this is a pipe dream, what with polling only seven days away in his constituency. Even more worrisome is the effect that the serial bomb blasts in Coimbatore the previous afternoon will have on the sentiments of the volatile voters in Tamil Nadu.

There is, however, no voluntary disclosure of panic from the man who sought to reshape India's economy in the last 18 months with an unprecedented people-friendly Budget and capped it with an income disclosure scheme late last year that raked in more money than anybody had expected. Ergo, P Chidambaram, astute lawyer, famous finance minister, and now aspiring member of Parliament (again) on a Tamil Maanila Congress ticket from the Sivaganga constituency, has decided that whatever will be, but nurturing the electorate is uppermost.

At 7.30 am on the dot, Chidambaram is off from his TMC headquarters in Sivaganga on a crisscross tour of the interior of his constituency which will take him 12 hours and 150 kilometres. It is a whistlestop tour, marked by the utter simplicity of the campaign trail -- the villages are plenty, but the people at every stop, even when there is a near hundred per cent turnout, are frequently less than 200. This does not faze the finance minister who has had the richest and most powerful in the country seeking favours from him in the not-too-distant past. In an election which simply has to be won, Chidambaram is a man driven.

He has a compassionate electorate. The bulk of it is rural labour who take pride in the man having made it to the capital. To offer advice to the prime minister on very important matters, as this correspondent's taxi driver, Sevalam, put it, and who has genuine feelings for the Tamils, never mind if he has not come back to the constituency in the past 18 months. Which MP does that anyway? And fortunately for Chidambaram, not many have heard of the bomb blasts the previous day.

In any case, it is the alliance with the DMK which seems to matter most to the man in the interior. "If he is with Karunanidhi, he is our man because he cares for the Dravids," said a tea vendor in one of the villages. The formidable image of G K Moopanar, leader of the Tamil Maanila Congress, and superstar Rajnikanth, who has officially lent support to this alliance, appears to matter a great deal too.

Chidambaram's furious campaign trail swallows villages every 15 minutes as his white Contessa zooms along narrow roads followed by an impressive convoy of five cars including party worker, state police, and the by-now mandatory SPG, which seems to have the villagers in thrall. A cassette extolling the virtues of the TMC, DMK and Rajnikanth, and denouncing Jayalalitha, BJP, and the RSS precedes Chidambaram's arrival at every venue. gulal and a concoction of sweet-smelling oils that they apply on his forehead, while the local bigwigs drape his head and shoulders with shawls.

Chidambaram, on his part, greets everybody with a smile and a brief speech on why everyone should vote the TMC to kept the corrupt regime of the AIADMK out of power. After that, a TMC lackey takes over to highlight the symbol of the party, a bicycle.

By mid-afternoon, the tireless Chidambaram has covered a dozen villages before breaking for lunch. At his last halt, he decries the bomb blasts at Coimbatore to an unsuspecting audience, then realises that his should be Jayalalitha, for which he earns many rounds of applause.

Before he finishes, he points with a flourish towards the bicycle again. Close by, a man confesses that he will affix his stamp of approval of this symbol. Standing next to him, his wife confesses that she can only do what her husband expects her to do.

For Chidambaram at least, the emergence of Sonia Gandhi for the Congress, the haunting presence of Jayalalitha for the AIADMK, or the unexpected bomb blasts aimed at the top BJP leadership appears to have made no difference. He should ride home to Delhi on the tyres of his bicycle and his reputation intact.

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