Sujan Dutta in The Telegraph, Calcutta, salutes Arun Jaitley, the commander of the BJP’s victorious army in Karnataka, and compares him to German “Desert Fox”, Erwin Rommel:
“Arun Jaitley has marshalled the victories for the BJP in four large States since the UPA came to power in New Delhi. For a politician who has not personally contested a mass-level election since he was the leader of the Delhi University Students Union, that is quite an achievement.
“As in Gujarat and Bihar before that, he rarely left the State capital. He rented a house in the tony Koramangala locality, took his cook from Delhi with him—he is on a strict diet since his bypass surgery—drove from the house to the BJP’s central election office in Malleswararam and back like a diligent executive would between work and home.
“He packed his office with infotech-savvy youth, ensuring that his database on Karnataka was as comprehensive as he could make it—all of this without being able to speak Kannada. He made sure that that nothing, absolutely nothing, from BJP headquarters in New Delhi to the state passed without his knowledge.”
Read the full article: General Jaitley’s conquest
Illustration: Sandeep Adhwaryu/ Outlook
Comparison true only if Rommel had faced the Allied Joint and Confused Command of North Africa with a few inputs from Churchill and Co.
Against a smart enemy, (his polar opposite in terms of tactics and strategy), superior numbers and better supply routes, he also lost. Plus, the Italians were on his side
If the Congress wants to win it has to have good supply routes (strong cadre), good strategy (give people a reason to vote for them), brilliant tactics (hand out tactics based on performance and constituency composition and not favoured surname) and above all, a capable and charismatic leader (not Baby-face-Rahul Gandhi, who is the electoral equivalent of that other good looking but thoroughly useless “leader” Mountbatten)
Just wondering if Arun Jaitley was hired by APPA / MAGA family Corporation , would it have made a difference to the Secular Janata Fortune. 28 to 128 ??
A rented house, an office in Malleshvara with computers. You forgot to mention the endless supply of black money.
Success has many appas but failure is an anatha.
If elections can be “managed” and won as suggested by the article… why don’t we have professional Election Management degrees?
Too many crooks ashTe!
What about the old man in Raj Bhavan? who seemed to throw parties for his old cronies in Congress every day?
Remember, how Chavan could go directly to Raj Bhavan at 8 in the evening whereas elected representatives had not been given appointment to meeting since the morning!
Anyway, this is a culmination of a decade and a half’s worth of effort and planning. As much as Jaitley led the last charge to the finish line so to speak, one cannot forget the groundwork and preparation put in by the party to see this day.
Shravan–
You are right on the money. If an election is to be “managed,” what are the implications for democracy? And now the credit for the BJP’s unwelcome performance goes to an outsider.
Much as I detest to admit it, Devegowda is a native genius. If only Doddegowda had taught him to care about others, he might even be our liberator. Even Kumaraswamy and Revanna might have turned out to be decent fellows if their father had an ideal or two to guide him.
Because, B cube is Bcube, I demand that Yeddy turns up in Karnataka’s Tirupati yellow/red for the oath-taking. Time to show Jaitley and the Delhi crowd “nim bele il beyodilla.’ As it is the sponsored media is making much of them… Jaitley japa nilsrappa. Do you know how long it takes to get from Koramangala to Malleswara –that was enough time for Yeddy’s men to get some work done. Not that much was needed to win. When everyone is a loser, some one has to win right?
“You forgot to mention the endless supply of black money.”
That goes without saying……. Well, *all* political parties depend on “black money”…So what is novel about it !
“an outsider.”
Whoa…….a fellow Indian, Arun Jaitley is an “outsider”.. while Mrs… you-know-who is an integral part of our country and culture….Enu tribble standards!
What Jaitly did was exactly the strategy that Jayram Ramesh adopted in Lok Sabh elections purely working in his hideout packed with computer savy kids to come out with statistics that guided him to advise how exactly to stop the BJP juugernaut coming while BJP made the cardinal mistake of ‘India shining’ slogan while rural India was suffering
Sandesh–
I see what you mean, but I can hardly think of the uneducated woman from Italy as one of our own.
i
But you cant help that feeling.. It feels bad when Delhi (politicians and news channels) still cannot even pronounce the names properly.
Jaitley’s efforts were important and factor for victory of BJP. Because of the democratic setup of the BJP party, there requires enormous co-ordination required to fulfill the campaign. This is usually termed as “campaign management” and is done in almost all elections in every decent country. BJP had projected BSY as a leader and was clear to the voters on that front unlike congress. BSY willingness to work with centre showed unity and integrity in the party. There was a huge pile of campaign work at the low level was completed by the organised teams of RSS and BJP together
Congress, however did have a very uneasy setup for managing the campaign. with so many leaders too many CM candidates and none of them yet being projected by their central leadership made it difficult. Especially when the 4 CMs (Siddu, Karge, Krishna, Dharm) to be were not working as one team. And the election co-ordination led by Prithviraj became helpless and chaotic. Inducting dissidents from JDs showed that Congress is still lacking the kind of leaders inside and by inducting alone there was lots of displeasure within.
Many ways the JDS lone commander (DG) had lost the leaders in the Party who could understand the tacts of the war and convey them down to the lowerlevel campaigners. DGs campaign management capabilities are far more efficent and proven than the recent Jaitley or others. 12 yrs back it was contending alone with Congress (which was huge) and still was winning in great numbers.
Shravan–
And our own Yed went along with the program and changed the spelling of his name to make it easy for non-Kannadas to pronounce. In cyberland, he is going to be “Eddy.”