BEING A “commoner” at election time can be backbreaking work. Ask Naveen Jindal. On Thursday, the Congress-turned-BJP leader, its Kurukshetra candidate, and an industrialist who declared combined assets with his wife of Rs 300 crore plus in 2019, was captured loading a sack of grain onto a truck. Or Hema Malini. On April 12, the perfectly groomed BJP Mathura candidate and actor, often accused of being an “absentee MP”, was seen in a wheat field, holding a sickle in her hand, ostensibly harvesting the crop. Over in Ghaziabad, Congress candidate Dolly Sharma cooked rotis on an earthen stove while canvassing on April 11. It is hard to say if anyone is taken in, but a similar photo shoot in 2019 had certainly not hurt Malini, who had won by 2.93 lakh-vote margin. Mathura votes on April 26, and there may still be more field trips ahead for the 75-year-old, whose attendance record in Parliament in her second term (2019-2024) was all of 49%, among the lowest. Malini is facing Mukhesh Dhangar of the Congress, who a day before her video had shared one of his collecting straw, tying it into a bundle and lifting it on his back. Dhangar's video was accompanied by the text, “Jo neta zameen se juda hota hai, wahi kisan ka dukh samjhega. AC mein baithne wala kya janega kisan ki takleefen (Only a down-to-earth leader understands the pain of a farmer. How can a person used to living in AC comfort be aware of the farmer's plight)?” Dhangar, an MBA and a Congress state general secretary, who was apparently a last-minute choice for the seat, also challenged Malini to a joint, hour-long harvesting session. “I'm a farmer's son, I know how it works. I'm a son of the soil from Braj Bhoomi. Hemaji is a pravasi (outsider), I'm a Brajwasi,” Dhangar told The Indian Express. His other posts include videos of him bathing a buffalo while campaigning in villages of the Mant region, and sharing a meal with a farmer. Along with the harvesting video, Hema Malini also posted on social media that she had visited many fields to interact with farmers, who loved having her in their midst and insisted they pose with her. She also claimed that she has been meeting farmers regularly over the past 10 years she has been the Mathura MP. Polling in Kurukshetra, along with the rest of the nine seats in Haryana, is due only on May 25. However, it's never too early when you have to find your feet in a new party like Jindal has to. In her video making rotis posted on April 11, Dolly Sharma told the camera, “Saara kaam aave hai mujhe… (I can do all types of work).” The post with the video added: “Your MP knows how to use both the chulha (oven) and the kalam (pen) very well.” June 4 will tell if voters agree, with Ghaziabad having finished polling on April 19. The fate of Virender Rawat, the Congress candidate from Haridwar in Uttarakhand, is also sealed. The whole of the state voted on April 19, with Rawat's father and former chief minister Harish Rawat concentrating his energies on his son's seat. Last time, the BJP had won all the five Uttarakhand Lok Sabha constituencies. As part of the prestige fight, Rawat Senior stepped in for a vegetable vendor to sell vegetables from his cart, and later the same day, took charge of a fruit juice stall, operating the manual hand juicer – with the videos shared widely. A Congress leader described Harish Rawat's posts as a way “to show that he is connected with all walks of life". That was more than could be said about his own party, which tried in vain to wean Rawat Senior away from Haridwar to also pitch in for other candidates. For Ravi Kishan, an actor and Bhojpuri film star, stepping into the shoes of a tea seller at a stall was perhaps easier. The sitting BJP MP, repeated from Gorakhpur, kicked off his campaign on April 2 with his version of chai pe charcha, shredding ginger and adding it to boiling water. Around a month-and-a-half to go for voting in Gorakhpur (due June 1), Kishan, a one-time MP, says in the video: “Today I'm making tea because Modiji is winning 400 seats.” A fellow BJP worker quips: “Saansadji har kaam mein maahir hain (The MP is skilled in all kinds of work).” With sunglasses hanging from his shirt and a gamchha (towel) around his shoulders to beat the heat, Ravi Kishan adds in Bhojpuri dialect: “Jisne garibi dekhi hai, wohi issBharat ko chala sakta hai. 80% dehaat hai iss Bharat me. To yeh rajkumar log jo heera ka chamach leke paida hue hain, jo Italy mein padhe hain, Australia mein padhe hai, woh log ee Bharat ka dukh na samajh pahien (Only one who has faced poverty can run this country. 80% of the country lives in villages. The princes who are born with diamond spoons, studied in Italy and Australia, won't be able to understand India's pain).” The Italy and Australia references seemed to be directed at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav. In Jharkhand's Godda, BJP MP Nishikant Dubey has also taken the tea route, serving the beverage to party workers and the public in kulhads (earthen pots) in Deoghar on April 2. Dubey, who scalded many Opposition MPs in the outgoing Lok Sabha – particularly the Trinamool Congress's Mahua Moitra – says in the video of his serving tea: “Deoghar has four iconic tea stalls. Whenever I'm here, I drink tea at one of these. Today I realised that I should also make the tea to learn how they do it.” Tea had special significance for the BJP, he suggests. “You have seen that a chaiwala is our PM. So as a worker, we too are learning how to make tea to understand kis mehnat se aadmi desh ka Pradhan Mantri banta hai (the effort one has to put in to become the PM).” Godda votes on June 1, so Dubey should get enough practice.
