Come election season, each party addresses a different man on the street.
The aam aadmi, or the common man, has been the cynosure of all political eyes lately. Even if we disregard the question of the missing aam aurat, who exactly is the aam aadmi? Last week, BSP chief Mayawati stoutly declared who he is not. At her Lucknow rally, she warned the AAP against calling the Dalit “aam aadmi”. Yet the man on the street, whom all political parties claim to address, is a protean creature. In the political vocabulary, the aam aadmi has become a roomy metaphor for the dispossessed and the aspirational, the resentful and the hopeful, all at once.
For the most part, in between polls, “the people”, in whose name schemes and policies are launched and political claims unleashed, remain a shapeless abstraction, a nameless and faceless entity. But election season forces each party to lay claim to its chosen constituencies and make its pitch accordingly. That is when the many shapes of the aam aadmi are revealed.
