Watchdog keeps bark, loses bite

Journalists, so long used to the caustic end of his tongue, are still to get used to the friendly openness of his new demeanour. 8220;Palghat, where I come from, has been home to cooks, crooks, civil servants and politicians. And I have been all of them,8221; he chuckles, quickly adding, 8220;I8217;ve never been a crook. Like a lotus leaf in water, I remain untouched.8221;

The firstquestion you want to ask is why has he entered the cesspool which he had sworn to clean. Seshan8217;s answer is surprisingly unoriginal and free of bombast. The urge, he says, came from a desire to 8220;return something to my country and people8221;. The past decade has convinced him that the only way to get something done in this country is by entering the Lok Sabha.

So is it lust for power? 8220;I have no lust for power. I have sat on the most important chairs in the country. At 67, chairs hold little charm for me, I am looking for a seat,8221; he says. It was a complete surprise, he adds, when Sonia Gandhi asked him to fight from Gandhinagar; the next day, he flew down to file his papers.

Seshan8217;s USP is, not surprisingly, honesty. It8217;s the one quality which even his detractors will agree on. He is introduced to villagers who don8217;t know him as 8220;the man who is not scared of anyone and who does not indulge in corruption because he has no children8221;.

And so the plank the former CEC contests on is a promise to cleanthe political system. 8220;I want to make everything a little better,8221; he says. A cleaner, quicker, more transparent and less corrupt administration tops the things to do8217; list. Next is cutting down the flab in the government, reducing the red tape and working for a more orderly Parliament and assemblies where 20 per cent time is lost in just noise.

Also, expediency in the judicial procedure. 8220;Rajiv Gandhi was killed in the presence of 3,000 policemen. Yet, the convictions came eight years later,8221; he says.

At the local level, he is targeting the drinking water problem of Gandhinagar and also promising a diesel-engine train between Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad and improvement in the Gandhinagar railway station. He has even pledged to donate his salary as MP to Tintoda, one of the most backward villages in the constituency with just about 40 per cent literacy.

A heavy workload for a neophyte, you could say. But tell Seshan that and you only succeed in drawing out his self-esteem: 8220;How effective was oneCEC?8221;But it is Seshan8217;s reputation that is acting against him today. The middle class cannot digest the fact that Seshan is standing as a candidate of the one party that symbolises all the systemic ills he rails against. 8220;But what choice did I have? I didn8217;t have the money to contest as an independent and the Congress was the party closest to my ideology. To make use of opportunity is not opportunism,8221; he says.

Given the stature of his opponent and the BJP8217;s record in Gandhinagar, it would appear a lost cause. Only, Seshan doesn8217;t seem to believe in lost causes. 8220;My fights in life have always been tough. But I have won all of them.8221;