Not that kind of poll

NEW DELHI: When Nirmala Sitaraman announced she wasn’t going to contest the Lok Sabha elections because she doesn’t have ‘that kind of money’, she ended up sounding disingenuous rather than disarming as perhaps her intention was. That’s because her humble brag flies in the face of the Modi-Shah BJP’s unmatched capacity to draw upon vast resources, told and untold, and use any machinery, official and corporate, to ensure the victory of its candidates. Surely the party could have spared her a few of the Rs 8,200 crore it raked in as electoral bonds?

Sitharaman’s reason for staying away from the fray may in fact be truthful and not as inventive as that proffered by Jayant Singh, who too has cried off, ostensibly to concentrate on climate change. She can claim, justifiably, that she’s not ‘that kind of politician’ who is willing to accept ‘that kind of help’ from the party. She belongs to that class of politicians whose sense of pride, probity or self-esteem makes them loath to getting their hands dirty in the business of winning elections. These are the ‘Rajya Sabha types’ and there is a place for them. If not, our governments would be the poorer. Most governments down the years have benefited from co-opting policy talent and accommodating them in the Rajya Sabha. Their contribution to public service has been none the less for not being elected to the Lok Sabha. No one thought less of Manmohan Singh because he never won a direct election.

It was the BJP that saw a virtue signalling opportunity in fielding its Rajya Sabha types in the Lok Sabha election, and tried to make a boast of it by naming Piyush Goyal, Bhupender Yadav, Rajiv Chandrasekhar and Mansukh Mandaviya to constituencies in their home states. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Prahlad Joshi jumped the gun and announced that Sitharaman, and external affairs minister S Jaishankar would contest too.

Both the latter named seem to have been caught unawares. For one thing, their home states are not too hospitable to them, electorally speaking. Sitharaman, a Tamil Nadu native, would not only have needed much help from the BJP’s local allies—of whom there are not many—she would also have needed ‘that kind of money’. She was offered a seat in Andhra Pradesh too, where her in-laws hail from, but her contest from there would have occasioned disturbing questions about the criticisms levelled by her husband against her economic policies.

Sitharaman’s decision to desist smacks of discretion—being the better part of valour—rather than thrift. The fact is, the BJP did try to test the waters in Tamil Nadu with her. She was kept front and centre during the entire Sengol drama enacted by the Modi regime in May last year, and was prominent in the party’s overtures to religious conservatives in the State. Her decision to pull out now is an admission that those efforts did not really make any headway nor did they raise her profile high enough to enter the fray.

Whether borne out of thrift or discretion, Sitharaman’s withdrawal is an embarrassment for the BJP. It effectively punctures the party’s smug belief that Narendra Modi’s savoir faire is sufficient to win this election, that his visage is winsome enough in all locales, all contexts. It also suggests that the regime’s finance minister herself has no confidence in that notion. Increasingly, such tells give us hope that this election is anything but a foregone conclusion.