NTR Style: Charioting A Campaign

It is time too to hit campaign trail through road shows and rath yatras. Lal Kishan Advani’s famous rath yatra had reaped a rich harvest for the Bharatiya Janata Party. Nearer home, we saw how YS Rajasekhara Reddy’s pada yatra had put him firmly in the chief minister’s throne. Arvind Kejriwal’s road shows catapulted him to power in quick time and threw him out of it just as quickly.

The late NTR redefined the concept of election campaign bringing cinema techniques to politics. Rivals dismissed the offbeat style as yet another celluloid gimmick that would at best amuse and entertain the voters but never add to the chances of victory. It did not take long for the critics to sit up and take notice. They realised the significance of the saying ‘if you cannot beat him, join him’. Today, every politician recognises the magic wand the road shows are.

Taking the plunge into politics at the age of 60, the silver screen idol founded the Telugu Desam party — he named it so on the spur of the moment in response to a journalist's question — and lost no time hitting the road. He got the vintage Chevrolet van, dusted up and transformed it into a `ratham'. Fitted with rotating floodlights and loudspeakers, the Chaitanya Ratham had ample space for NTR and his aides to work or relax. He would climb on to the top through a hatch.

Clad in bell-bottom trousers and a full-sleeved shirt that he had often sported in his later films, NTR would ride atop the ratham through the countryside, covering more than 100 km every day, stopping to address a small gathering, which would soon surge into a big one, or waving to men and women at work on the fields. For months, the Chaitanya Ratham was his home away from home. He ate, slept and worked in it. Son Nandamuri Harikrishna was at the wheel most of the time.

He grabbed media attention, popular approval and even ridicule for his out of the box ideas and practices. He would pull his chariot to the roadside for a bath and interact with villagers and passing truck drivers, enter a hole-in- the- wall eatery and share steaming idli, pesarattu-upma and coffee etc. These activities became the regular menu that the Telugu newspapers had served for their readers.

People waited for hours to snatch a glimpse of their screen god in a new avatar. The party’s signature tune, Maa Telugu Thalliki Malle Poodanda, heralded the arrival of the ratham with an electrifying effect on the people. The response would invariably be overwhelming. He would be late by 24 hours, sometimes even longer. But people would wait regardless. They would camp right on the roadside, bringing along cots, stoves and utensils just to make sure they did not miss him. Women would stop the ratham to offer arathi.

Two aspects of NTR’s style of establishing rapport with the people stood out for their mesmerising appeal. Not for him the moth-eaten mode of ‘sodara, sodarimanulaara.’ He stirred the heart-strings of the audience with ‘naa tenuginti aadapaduchalaara, thammullaara.’ No politician had done this before. In the good old days when the Congress party held sway over the country and the States, leaders would depend on a handful of trusted and powerful village-level elders whose writ ran in the villages. Things changed with greater awareness among the weaker sections. State leaders addressed public meetings in select cities and towns and got to communicate with a limited number of voters.

In contrast, rath yatra enabled the Telugu Desam leader to have direct contact with tens of thousands of people across the State. Now most politicians plump for road shows or rathams to effectively reach people.

‘Madama thippadam maa vamsamlo ledu’ is a common refrain in films starring Balakrishna or other Nandamuri scions. This was never more in evidence than during NTR’s first campaign in 1982.

Beginning the tour sometime in April, he did not return to Hyderabad until the elections were announced many months later. In the gruelling tour, he vomited blood and was advised by doctors to suspend the campaign. Close aides suggested he could safely rest at home, as nothing could stop a landslide victory. No, he continued regardless. Beating a retreat was not in his grain.

Rathams used by present-day politicians may look far more sophisticated and boast of several modern features, but NTR and his Chaitanya Ratham have found enduring place in the pages of history as pioneers of modern election campaigning techniques.

(The writer is former Chief of Bureau, The Hindu, Hyderabad) dasukesavarao@ gmail.com, dasukesavarao@ yahoo.com