Hooda-Nit?

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This Sunday had northern Chandigarh awash in the uniform of Haryana's Jatland - white and not-so-white kurta pyjamas with sneakers. Throngs descended at Governor Paharia's residence to attend the swearing-in of Bhupinder Singh Hooda. So much so that a mild cane charge had to be ordered outside the Governor's house to push back the sea of sweating, panting, humanity struggling to get past the big black gates with the Ashoka Pillars of brass.

Democracy at work, I thought, wondering at the motivation driving these guys to come all the way from Rohtak and Narwana and Jind and Sirsa to catch a glimpse of their leader in a pushing, jostling, maddening crowd of supporters. The swearing-in ceremony is a surprisingly brief affair and when it is just the CM then it is about a one-minute affair. Yet the crowds. Baffling for sure.

Add to it the hopelessly out-of-tune police band that struck up a noisy cacophony when Hooda walked out with Governor Paharia. I believe the organisers, too, did not trust the musical abilities of the cops masquerading as a claptrap band and so decided to instead belt out the national anthem from a scratchy tape played out on crackling speakers. So much for quality, even at the top!

As an aside I always wonder why do the residences of Governors have two big guns on the outside. Both Punjab and Haryana Governor residences have guns at the gates. Harking back to the days of the Raj or trying to intimidate the citizenry in a subconscious display of state power?

Anyway, if this is what Hooda can muster, we thought, what would have happened had Om Parkash Chautala made it back to power. Governor Paharia's gardeners would have perhaps spent the next several months trying to get his carefully manicured garden back in shape.

Chautala's party - the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) got a dazzling 31 seats - something even they had not expected, whatever might have been their public utterances of confidence. The INLD is known to be a crowd-puller though, or rather a Jat puller. All its rallies in Haryana were well attended even as Congress leaders stood looking embarrassed when Sonia Gandhi came to an almost desolate rally in Karnal.

On the morning of the day results were to be declared, Hooda's residence at Rohtak was a virtual beehive of activity, almost as if he had become the CM again, even before counting began. Chautala sat alone in his room in Chandigarh in a guesthouse given by the Punjab Government. Now, Chautala is a man who elicits a certain sense of fear when you meet him. Such is the image created by and of the Chautalas - men to be feared. And that is an image they are finding hard to shrug off. Rohtak, of course is Hooda's territory but people we met there pointed out buildings alleging Chautala's men had taken a share in them by forcing owners to concede portions. True or false, an aura of fear has been built around the Chautalas. Had it not been that powerful fear factor that prompts Haryana to try and keep them out of power, Devi Lal's legacy could have got them back in governance even in the last Assembly polls. Chautala sat in his room with a plateful of fruits, green turban with its upright turra in starched majesty and one leg straight. The TV in his room showed Hooda playing badminton. Chautala's face had an immediate smirk.

Did Hooda's image projection actually provide fuel to a PR agency-driven campaign unleashed by the Chautalas to come back to power? In an earlier interview to TV channels, Hooda swung hard at the tennis court at the CM's residence even as he spoke of development in Haryana's hinterland. Interestingly right next to the tennis court was a cow-shed with a line of buffaloes chewing the cud. Had Hooda fed a couple of buffaloes instead of hitting out a couple of volleys on the tennis court, he could perhaps have got a couple of extra MLAs in the Assembly.

The Opposition had latched on to a few issues and exploited them to the hilt. The first and foremost was that Hooda is pandering to the rich, acquiring land for the big and the mighty and focussing on development in just three districts - Sonepat, Jhajjar and Rohtak, from where his son Deepender Hooda is an MP. The tennis-playing image just reinforced that concept. "Look Hooda knows no better than to play tennis and take away your lands for the big corporations and just develop Rohtak so his son can strengthen his hold there. Why do you want to vote for him again? You Jats in Sirsa and Jind would continue to languish in backwardness", was the INLD refrain. The Congress kept trying to insist that development always percolates outward in concentric circles from mega city regions like the National Capital Region and that Jhajjar, Sonepat and Rohtak happen to fall in that concentric first circle.

On counting day Chautala refused to comment till the results were almost out. At first he was elated and called a press briefing at 12.30 pm. Even there, old habits surfaced again and he made a veiled reference to journalists suggesting those who do not toe the line need to watch out. It was followed by a bright smile, but coming from Chautala, the statement did seem ominous.

By evening the tension on Chautala's face was visible and the irritation in his voice was high. After all, where they had been hoping to better their nine seats of 2005 by just a shade, they had ended up with 32 including one seat won by the friendly neighborhood Shiromani Akali Dal of long time family friends - the Badals.

Now they needed to cobble together 14 more to be back in the corridors of power. The Independents were the first to be wooed or rather targeted. So much so that a Chautala family member created panic in Sirsa when he went to meet Gopal Kanda, an Independent candidate ostensibly to congratulate him. Gopal Kanda reportedly refused a meeting and was rushed out of Sirsa in a private jet to Delhi for safekeeping. Kanda runs MDLR Airlines and was earlier a close confidant of the Chautalas. What must the Chautalas have told him on phone after he gave unconditional support to the Congress is anybody's guess.

INLD + SAD got 32 seats. If they had bagged the seven Independents like the Congress did, that would have taken them to 39. With four BJP seats they would have reached the 43 mark. With one BSP candidate they would have touched 44 and just two short of majority. It is then that Bhajan Lal's Haryana Janhit Congress with six MLAs would have played a crucial role.

However, even as power glittered just an arms length away, Hooda tied up with the Independents and took away the ace from the HJC. The Chautalas are quiet for now but the first Vidhan Sabha session promises to be a roaring affair with the Opposition back in force. In the last Assembly, Chautala was not even leader of the Opposition having secured just nine seats.

The big question everyone is asking is not why the Congress came down from 67 to 40 seats but why did the INLD go up from nine to 31? The answers are fairly straightforward. Hooda is not a great talker. He sounds fuzzy and mutters his way through interactions. Chautala is a forceful talker. Hooda was in power and had to deliver results. The Chautalas were out of power and only had to criticise and promise - a far easier task than doing real stuff... perhaps this is also the cause of anti-incumbency.

People want to believe what they hear and vote parties to power. Then they do not like what they see and vote them out of power.

Being better talkers the INLD leader could criticize and promise more at rallies and gatherings than what Hooda could do in his mutterances. Hooda had his detractors too and he said so at his comical press conference after taking over as the CM. He said that leaders in his own party refused to cooperate with party workers and led to the Congress losing critical seats.

Explaining development to rural Haryana in any case requires superlative language skills. When Hooda went ahead with his Haryana Number One campaign, the intensity of it had people looking around at their cow-sheds, their unemployed youth, the shortage of water, the price hikes and then turning the campaign into a joke. Positive messages can turn negative if overused. The Chautalas turned the campaign on its head and had people asking questions. And the answers never came. A confident Hooda government did not bother to do much ground work in the hinterland and neither did it launch a ground movement to keep the Jats on their side. The BJP votes that came to Congress when BJP was allied with INLD went back to the BJP when they broke away from INLD taking away numbers from the Congress. The HJC took away the Congress votes too. And lo and behold...INLD is alive!

If the HJC merges with Congress, then the safety factor for Hooda goes up. Else, be prepared for some more rumblings in Jatland.

As Hooda muttered, much to the surprise of everyone at his use of an English idiom - "We have won the war, but lost some battles."