Nagpur: In south Nagpur’s Manewada Chowk, people are patiently sitting in the dry, heavy heat. Some start fanning themselves with a campaign placard that has a huge cutout of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Union minister Nitin Gadkari in the front, and smaller photos of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis in between a full-bloomed lotus at the back.
Moments later, Gadkari, the Nagpur MP contesting a second term from the constituency, arrives and does what he has been doing in the Maharashtra city every evening for the past fortnight — talk about the infrastructure he has created across the country.
While most BJP candidates in the city are seeking votes in the name of Modi, welfare schemes like Ujjwala, Awas Yojana, Swachh Bharat and even the government’s stand on national security issues, Gadkari’s campaign for the 11 April Lok Sabha election has been completely devoid of these.
Gadkari’s one and only message to his voters is that the world is looking at Nagpur and it’s all because of him. But, he won’t take credit for it, he says. He will, instead, pass on the recognition to the Nagpur junta (people) who elected him.
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‘Infrastructure man’
The Union minister who has many infrastructure-related portfolios under his purview — road transport, highways, shipping, water resources, river development and Ganga rejuvenation — has chosen to capitalise his image of being ‘the infrastructure man’, ‘flyover minister’ and even ‘Roadkari’ since his days as the Maharashtra public works department minister.
Gadkari’s campaign attempts to play on the Nagpurkar pride with stories of how a Nagpur man, by way of blessings of the city’s populace, has gone on to create showpiece infrastructure connecting India to other countries, giving easy access to various pilgrimage centres within India and all this while moulding Nagpur.
In rally after rally, he casually mentions his efforts to operationalise the Chabahar Port in Iran, construction of Rs 26,000-crore worth roads and flyovers to link India, Bhutan, Nepal and Bangladesh, creating direct access to Bangladesh’s Chittagong port by dredging the Brahmaputra river and so on.
For instance, while addressing people at Nagpur’s Ayodhya Nagar last week, Gadkari said, “I built a port at Chabahar at Iran. It is such a port that the distance between Kandla and Chabahar is lesser than the distance between Delhi and Mumbai.
“Iran has petrol and diesel. Earlier if we had to go to Afghanistan, Uzbekistan or Russia, we had to cross Pakistan. But now because of the Chabahar port, we don’t need Pakistan. We can go directly and this has been a new addition to India’s development.”
The flying double-deckers
Speaking at rally in Nandanvan the same week, Gadkari said, “There’s a country called Austria. There is a company there that makes ropeway, cable car, funicular railway. I saw it all. A double-decker bus running in air. 260 people sit in it, traveling in the air.
“After seeing all that I came to India and called our ambassador there saying I want to bring all this to India and have a technical joint venture with the company,” Gadkari said.
He added that state-owned WAPCOS Ltd has now signed the agreement with the Austria-based cable car giant Doppelmayr Garaventa Group.
In his speeches, Gadkari also attempts to show that he respects all castes and creed, and that it is reflected in his infrastructure work. He talks about the laying of all-weather roads to reach Badrinath-Kedarnath-Gangotri, concrete roads to create a smooth circuit of all cities significant for Gautam Buddha, the proposed Ambedkar memorial at Mumbai’s Indu Mills and Nagpur’s Deekshabhoomi, among others.
In his rallies, the Nagpur Metro, too, finds a special pride of place.
“I got the Metro approved. The entire project is worth Rs 20,000 crore. This Metro is so special that at one place there will be a road, then a bridge, and on top of that a Metro. It will be three-tiered,” Gadkari said on the final evening of campaigning Monday at Manewada Chowk.
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The Nagpur man
At the same event, Gadkari did mention PM Modi in his speech once — a well-crafted anecdote to show the minister’s stature.
“The king of Dubai had come for our programme on 15th August. Modiji, the king and I were sitting on the same table for our meal. He told Modiji, ‘I will be grateful to you if you just do one thing for Dubai’. Modi asked, ‘What do you want?’”
“He said, ‘Export Nitin Gadkariji to Dubai for one year.’”
The anecdote prompted claps and hoots.
“I could do all this work, but the credit does not go to me,” Gadkari said.
“The real reason why I was able to do this work is because Nagpur’s people elected me. I became an MP and that is why I could become a minister,” he added.
Gadkari, said to have prime ministerial ambitions, something which he has dismissed, will end his campaign Tuesday with a rally by BJP president Amit Shah — the only big name in an election that the leader otherwise wants to win on his own might.
It is good to see Mr Gadkari talking about development and completed projects instead of shining in the reflected glory of the armed forces and the over hyped Balakot strikes.
I think him , Piyish ji and Sushma ji deserve huge credit for working tirelessly in their fields.