Singh is not a political animal like his former political patron, Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Amar Singh is not a political animal like his former political patron, Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Not for him is the heat and dust, the grime and sweat of everyday politics, meeting people from every section of society, commiserating with the poor and voicing his ideolgogical affiliations.
He was the celebrity-networked man-about-town, who must have enjoyed bamboozling his film industry friends with his gaming skills at the political boardgame. He had a good run as long as it lasted.
Singh is perhaps a symbol of politics in an economically liberalised India, where old-fashioned populist politics is infra-dig. The new politician flaunts the glamour factor and his non-political network as a status symbol. So Amar Singh was the politician who was friends with Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bhaduri, Jayaprada and industrialist Anil Ambani, who also loves beautiful people.
He was also the man who hungered to be taken as a serious politician. Apart from Mulayam Singh from 2002 to 2007 when his party Samajwadi Party (SP) was in power and he was UP CM, no one else took Singh seriously, especially in the SP.
The 2008 no-confidence motion was the time when Mulayam Singh was out of power and Singh wanted to keep SP in the political arena. And Singh wanted to play a useful role with his connectivity skills. The truth about winning friends for the UPA government in the trust motion is now headed for a long-drawn trial and the prosecution will have to prove its case. The story has unexplained aspects and Singh might not be the only fall guy.
But that is not the moral of Singh being sent to prison for a fortnight under judicial custody. He is an accused, not yet a convict. Singh may want to ponder how the wheel of fortune turns. What went wrong for Amar Singh? Lack of political skills? Absence of political commitment? Or, is it that he did not take politics seriously? His flamboyance, which was more the rumbustious kind, seems to have simply backfired.
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