Some do it with ‘vasudeo’

In this age of high-tech campaign, some candidates are happy to turn the clock back, relying on conventional modes of campaign, which include organising street plays, seeking blessings from spiritual leaders and even appointing a ‘vasudeo’.

A street-smart leader of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), Nawab Malik, and a highly-educated candidate from the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), have taken the help of street plays to ‘educate’ voters. Both organised plays in their respective constituencies—Anushakti Nagar and Malabar Hill—last week.

“The street play is still an effective way to pull at the heart strings of the audience,” said Chetan Pednekar, an MNS worker. “The response we got for the street plays shows that people still seek someone who can connect with them directly,” he said.

Shiv Sena leader Subhash Desai has appointed a vasudeo for his door-to-door campaign. In rural Maharashtra, a vasudeo is a traditional artist who visits people’s homes to educate them about social evils through  folk songs.

“As the Sena is a party which strongly advocates Marathi culture, we decided to appoint a vasudeo for campaigning. The voters welcome the vasudeo when he knocks on their doors early in the morning. It makes them feel connected with Marathi culture,” a poll manager for Desai said.

Another Sena leader, Gajanan Kirtikar, too had appointed a vasudeo for campaigning during the Lok Sabha election in his Mumbai North-West constituency. But he failed to win.

The daughter of a high-tech Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Pramod Mahajan, Poonam, recently sought blessings of a spiritual leader Narendra Maharaj. “Pramodji did not believe in spiritualism and the so-called spiritual leaders. But Poonam was driven by the compulsion to win the hearts of the spiritual leaders’ lakhs of followers,” a BJP worker said.