Chapter 36 #2
Atharva turned just as the door darkened.
The man looked middle-aged, was tall and tanned, his eyes slits in this sunlight.
In jeans and a sweater, he looked like a tourist more than the head of a district in HDP.
The man beside him was just as tall but looked nondescript, local — a white kurta and a brown shawl wrapped around his wiry shoulders.
He looked younger, younger than Atharva.
The round pair of spectacles was the only accessory on him that made him look urbane. Atharva concentrated on the older man.
“Tsering?”
“Yes. Atharva Kaul, is it?”
“Yes,” Atharva pushed his hand out. He walked inside the office and shook it.
“Thank you for waiting. How long have you been here?”
“A few minutes.”
“Did you have lunch?”
“Later. Where is everybody?”
“Everybody?”
“This is the party headquarters for North Kinnaur, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then where are your members?”
“Out, in their homes.”
“What do you mean?”
Tsering laughed, glancing at the man in the shawl beside him — “I mean, we don’t have any.”
“I was told you have run five membership drives in the last two years.” Atharva thought back to the reports he would get as CM, of progress in HDP. Most of the numbers had come in for places like Hamirpur, Kullu, Mandi and Chamba. Kinnaur, Lahaul and Spiti were mentioned but never in detail.
“We have Sonu, three cats and a pet yak to show for those,” Tsering pointed.
Atharva did not find that funny. But he was not here to take reports. He was here to run a drive. A drive without any human resource, he discovered now. He inwardly cursed Samar but as had been his SOP, took up this adversity as an opportunity.
“If you are ready, let’s discuss the plan for this membership drive. Things will change now due to a lack of our resources, but we will evolve as we go.”
“You can leave the file with Sonu. we will run this drive as per your outline,” Tsering nodded with a benign smile and walked to the far end of the open office. He messed around on his desk, effectively dismissing him.
Atharva drank down the insult and set the padded folder on an empty table. He pulled a chair, unbuttoned his coat and sat down. Opening the folder, he began to dislodge the papers, piling two sides — one for the membership drive and the other for the panchayat elections coming up in 10 months.
“How are you planning to run the membership drive without manpower?” Atharva inquired, separating the papers.
“I call some boys at daily wage.”
“How young?”
“15-16.”
“How much per day?”
“75 rupees.”
“Would you like to see the breakdown of the itinerary?” Atharva offered. He turned his head to the end of the office to find that Tsering was sitting back in his chair. He leaned back some more, thought for a few seconds.
“Sure, why not,” he sat up indulgently.
Atharva remained unmoved as Tsering got to his feet, filled a glass of water, drank it down.
He set his mobile to charge. And then he walked to the table, slowly, at his leisure, pulling the chair beside his.
Atharva glanced up at the man in the shawl, still stationed inside the office, close to them now.
“That’s Vikram from Sirmaur. He handles our party’s transportation across the state.”
The man, Vikram, nodded at Atharva. Atharva nodded back.
“Transportation of goods, services or people?” Or intel?
Vikram’s mouth turned up in a half-smile. The glasses weren’t the only thing intellectual about him then.
“Everything,” the young man’s face was solemn.
Atharva returned to the papers in front of him — “Are these figures accurate?” He passed the stapled bunch of village census — population, age, socio-economic breakdown, religion, etc. Tsering glanced through it.
“More or less.”
“Ok. As per this breakdown, and keeping in mind that this is a border village, we are competing big. Himachal Jan Sangathan and Janta Party are ruling legislative and panchayat respectively, correct?”
Tsering nodded.
“Then our aim should not only be a membership drive. Acquiring members for HDP will be one step of the rung. We will run another step parallel to it, one that nobody expects from a new party such as ours.”
“What?”
Atharva pushed the second pile of papers towards him — “A candidate drive.”
Tsering’s brows drew together. His head leaned down into the papers, and seeing his interest, Sonu circled around them too, coming closer and closer until he stood behind Tsering.
“This is…” Tsering looked up, eyes wide. “Is this even allowed?”
“There is no rule book that says anything against it.”
“You want us to go after all the candidates in all the seats that came second in the last election?”
“Yes.”
“And why can’t we recruit our own candidates? We are Himachal Development Party. We have the capacity to nurture our own candidates.”
“Hmm? From where?” Atharva glanced around the empty office. Tsering’s gumption soured.
“Don’t go after every runner-up candidate.
Go after those whose ideologies come close to ours.
Bring them in. This way, you are bringing in their share of votes.
Then the work is to just nudge them over that margin.
It’s a matter of smart calculation. Once you get a foothold in a few seats, your manpower will expand exponentially. To break in, you have to break in.”
“Does Samar sahab know this?”
Atharva clamped up. Samar did not know this. He had been swamped in Jammu. They hadn’t gotten a chance to speak but he had been clear in his message of key objectives — recruit as many able members as possible and plant a candidate drive for Panchayat Election 2018.
When Atharva did not speak for a long second, Tsering got to his feet and walked to his desk. Atharva eyed him as he picked up his mobile, dialled a number and plastered it to his ear, turning away. Atharva waited as he talked in hushed whispers. Long minutes passed.
And then he turned, striding to him with his mobile held out.
Atharva knew who it was.
“Samar,” he addressed without even looking at the number.
“What is this, Atharva?”
“Elaborate,” he clipped, looking Tsering in the eye.
“I sent you there to oversee a membership drive and try and see if we can identify candidates. You are talking about poaching other party’s candidates! This is not Kashmir and you don’t get away with shit like that.”
Atharva held his tongue. A moment of silence passed.
“I am sorry,” Samar sighed. “I did not mean it like that. Just, that, we are not doing it this way. You oversee Tsering’s work, guide him on the membership drive.
Do not go into the drive yourself. North Himachal may be far away from Kashmir politics but you were big news and it’s not been that long.
Leave the candidate hunting for now. Take a debrief report, set up cadence for communication with headquarters at Shimla and move to Lahaul.
Replicate the same process there and in Spiti.
We need more manpower on our hands right now, not seats. It takes time to build up credibility.”
Atharva listened, quiet. And Samar's tone softened, turned condescending.
“Look how it took us a decade to build up KDP. You will replicate the same in Himachal. And this time we might get results faster because we are more experienced…”
“Ok.”
Atharva pulled the phone down his ear and ended the call. He returned the mobile to Tsering.
“Let’s talk about the membership drive.”
He reached out and collected his candidate-identification papers. As he was swapping them for the membership drive strategy, he did not miss the smug smirk on Tsering’s face.
Atharva did not let that come in the way of this work.
He hated going forward. He hated the humiliation.
He hated the waste of time and resources that would ensue in this drive because even if they gathered a thousand volunteers and members, they would never be able to compete at scale with other parties for the next five years, in which time, the parties would study their Kashmir model and come after them. One plan never worked on two missions.
But as was made clear to him not a minute ago — he wasn’t the alpha on this mission. He was no longer the alpha on any mission.
So he buried the injury of his insult and began.
“We start with booth-level mapping and target-setting…”