THE CHARM OFFENSIVE

THE UNION COMMERCE MINISTER STEPS INTO THE HURLY BURLY OF ELECTORAL POLITICS IN HIS MAIDEN ATTEMPT TO WIN A LOK SABHA SEAT 

-  RAJ CHENGAPPA & DHAVAL S. KULKARNI

AS THE UNION MINISTER OF COMMERCE, HE IS USED TO WALKING THE RED CARPET. But as Candidate Piyush Goyal, says a partyman with a smile, he is forced to tread a carpet of brown dust and brave Mumbai's sultry heat that leaves his grey Modi jacket drenched in sweat. Goyal himself seems game for the rough and tumble of electoral politics as he greets supporters in a Kandivali bylane in what is his maiden attempt to win a Lok Sabha seat. Though nominated to the Rajya Sabha thrice, he does have some experience at the hustings. When he was a toddler, he points out, his mother, a three-time MLA from Maharashtra, would take him along while campaigning. His first brush with electioneering came when the veteran Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L.K. Advani asked him to manage his campaign in his first Lok Sabha election in 1989 from New Delhi.

As Goyal sets out, sitting in his rath, an open-roofed saffron-coloured SUV with large cut-outs of Modi emblazoned on its sides, he confesses that he finds the entire experience of campaigning both "exhilarating and elevating" and also unique because of the "feet on the ground" feeling (see accompanying interview). He had grown up in the much more storied Sion, an hour's drive away from Kandivali. He recalls that when he was young, Kandivali and much of Mumbai North, the constituency he is contesting from, was full of the stone quarries that supported the maximum city's construction boom. Now in Kandivali, as in neighbouring Borivali, slums have come up higgledy-piggledy, rubbing shoulders with the highrises for the middle and upper middle class, typical of the exponential growth of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.