Mr Hero at ground Zero

Roaming the landscape of interior Maharashtra since August, the BJP8217;s chief campaign visionary has transformed into a travel weary footsoldier. His mission: to sense 8216;8216;which way the wind blows8217;8217; before October 13, date of the Maharashtra election, the first prizefight since the NDA lost the crown of Delhi to the Congress-led UPA earlier this year.

To track down the tech-strategist behind the NDA8217;s ill-fated Lok Sabha blitz, roll out a map, travel down bumpy roads and knock at homes of party cadre in remote Maharashtra.

After all, Mahajan has been invisible in Delhi and only fleetingly spotted in Mumbai. Through the turbulent past two months, through his party8217;s boycott of Parliament, complaints about the prime minister8217;s manners, through the Uma Bharati tiranaga issue, the 8216;8216;tainted ministers8217;8217; mess, Mahajan has been the nowhere man.

The politico who so loved the media has not been around for sound bites to the national press. It8217;s like he8217;s enforced a personal boycott of television studios. His contemporaries in the party, Arun Jaitley and Susham Swaraj, Yashwant Sinha and M. Venkaiah Naidu, have taken control of Opposition agitprop. Mahajan8217;s disappeared, fallen off, as it were, the national political map.

He8217;s been in Maharashtra, preparing for the battle that will sink or save his political ambitions. He8217;s running a campaign just so low-key and so different from the Lok Sabha razzmatazz he presided over earlier this year.

Log off illusion, click on reality
FIRST you have to get used to the idea of Mr Mahajan minus the laptop. He8217;s probably left it in Delhi. Far from the five star bandobast of even the BJP8217;s national executive meeting in Mumbai, he has breakfast, lunch and dinner at homes of beaming BJP cadre, bunks overnight in circuit houses and struggles with BSNL connectivity.

That day in slushy Jamkhed 8212; a nondescript dot some six hours away from Pune 8212; Mahajan stepped down from the stage and delivered his speech standing, soaked to the skin before gaping farmers. 8216;8216;I am counting every rain drop,8217;8217; he told them, holding back his listeners from scurrying for cover.

His travelling companions worried whether his microphone-weary voice would hold, though a Nagpur-based homoeopath had provided pills to pop minutes before a speech. But Mahajan was unrelenting. If his intent was to shock and awe his audience, an old Pramod technique, irrespective of whether he8217;s talking to Delhi editors or daily wagers, he succeeded.

Back in his white Lancer 8212; his Ambassador gave up the exhausting journey and broke down somewhere in Marathwada 8212; Mahajan said the dripping wet speech sent a message of bonding. 8216;8216;They will remember this 10-20 years from now.8217;8217;

8216;8216;It does not hurt when I am called a hi-tech campaigner. Technology is a tool, not an absolute ideology,8217;8217; he went on, wearily taking off a saffron turban. 8216;8216;But it does hurt me when they say I am a leader in the air, with no roots, no awareness of ground realities.8217;8217;

8216;I am trying to change myself8217;
THE BJP is contesting 117 of Maharashtra8217;s 288 assembly seats 8212; the other 171 are with its ally, the Shiv Sena 8212; in this very down-to-earth election. For a start, the party has said goodbye to gimmicks. To embrace the mass rural vote, it has to fight hard, the old-fashioned way.

8216;8216;I am not setting an example,8217;8217; Mahajan told The Sunday Express at a brief halt in Mumbai. 8216;8216;I am trying to change myself.8217;8217; Deciding against the helicopters and chartered flights until the last 10 days of campaigning, Mahajan has covered the length and breadth of rural Maharashtra since August.

8216;8216;Self-criticism8217;8217; is his one-phrase explanation for the reversal in strategy. 8216;8216;We are not experimenting in this critical election.8217;8217; In short, there8217;s no bragging of victory foretold 8212; only statements punctutated with a million ifs.

8216;8216;If we fight in Maharashtra as equals then people will think the Lok Sabha result was an exception. If we can win Maharashtra, it will have an electrifying effect. If we win, the workers will snap out of demoralisation.8217;8217;

He ponders lessons from the Lok Sabha campaign. 8216;8216;I had presumed that all would welcome the Vajpayee phone calls and SMSes. I am responsible,8217;8217; he explains. 8216;8216;Technology gave us maximum reach but not a voter response. Traditional campaigning lets you meet voters, guage reactions on their faces.8217;8217;

Country roads, take Pramod home
THE roadshow began in August when the party think-tank divided the 288 constituencies for the first phase of campaigning among Mahajan and state leaders Gopinath Munde, Nitin Gadkari and Eknath Khadse. Mahajan took on over half the legwork. On September 1, the quartet traded route maps for another 25 days of exhaustive touring.

On the road, not a minute is wasted. Teams of local cadre and leaders hop into the Lancer on every leg. This is politics as serious business. 8216;8216;It is a tough battle and workers need motivation,8217;8217; Mahajan tells you. 8216;8216;Both alliances have powerful grassroots. Shiv Sena-BJP have an advantage so far, but the advantage does not mean we have won.8217;8217;

Party analysts figure from the Lok Sabha results that the SS-BJP combine holds an edge in 147 assembly segments. That8217;s an advantage thinner than your local paper dosai.

To fortify the advantage, Mahajan has a secret recipe. A mandatory nightcap of hot milk laced with turmeric for strained vocal cords.

In low country, no high horses
THAT wet day, breakfast was an 8 am plate of idli at a party worker8217;s house at Ahmednagar, while ticket seekers waited to complain, appeal or simply stare. The rule of the roadshow is every meal must be at a local functionary8217;s home. The reward is a pat on the back, a smiling photo-op beside charpoys and cows.

At Jamkhed, BJP worker Dattatrey Wave8217;s family slaved over a simple feast of chapatis, two green vegetables, rice, dal and raita. Easy on the traveller8217;s stomach, compared to a Jalgaon worker8217;s spread of faujdari dal 8212; a hardy concoction simmered in chillies for hours. 8216;8216;I am blessed,8217;8217; Wave said emotionally.

His VIP guests lunched cheerfully on fraying mats on the cold stone floor. The plastic chairs and tables Wave had borrowed were floating in rain water. The visitors picked their starched white kurtas and waded through the brown flood. Nobody complained.

We sent the SMSes, they won the polls
WHEN the party poured resources into campaign technology, SMSes and Vajpayee8217;s recorded messages this summer, the result was a rude surprise, even in Maharashtra. The BJP lost saffron bastions of veteran MPs like Ram Naik in North Mumbai and Jaywantiben Mehta in South Mumbai. In both cases, some three decades of dominance was undone.

Now the party8217;s image reversal is minute. In August, when some 50,000 women were invited for a BJP meet at Shegaon in north Maharashtra, Mahajan decided to keep BJP-affiliated movie stars away: 8216;8216;People should not think the women arrived just to look at a star.8217;8217;

No periphery politics, address the core
The party has also changed its advertising plan, wisely doing market research before deciding where to spend. The surveys figured that two regional channels and local, mofussil newspapers had wide reach in rural areas, not national dailies and channels. To be fair, this was a strategy Mahajan used in the Rajasthan assembly election in November 2003 as well.

Confidential surveys were also commissioned so that tickets to 8216;8216;doubtful8217;8217; candidates could be decided with feedback from their constituencies.

The chief strategist has sent top leaders knocking at doors in house-to-house visits. Munde is making calls to Pune voters, Gadkari has charge of Nagpur. Mahajan ventured into Khetwadi in south Mumbai for a day.

The back-to-basics approach is also clear when you ask him about wooing Muslim votes. 8216;8216;Frankly,8217;8217; says Mahajan, 8216;8216;we now want to consolidate our traditional voters in big numbers.8217;8217; The implication is clear.

IS this campaign a personal battle? 8216;8216;In my three decades of politics, I never thought state politics,8217;8217; Mahajan says. 8216;8216;This is like an examination where a student must work harder. But I always was and always will be interested in national politics 8230; After October, the BJP president may give me a new job, maybe Bihar or Jharkhand elections.8217;8217;

That brief betrayal of longterm plans aside, Mahajan is giving away nothing. At a media appearance last week-end at the BJP8217;s Nariman Point headquarters in Mumbai, he was unusually silent. To the incessant, annoying ringing of cellphones all round, he said in a slow, dull manner, 8216;8216;Look, only my cellphone is not ringing. Now I am low-tech.8217;8217; And decidedly lying low too 8212; till Judgement Day.