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Badal gives benign face to hegemony, but Amarinder may not wince

S P Singh

IF hegemony has a benign face, it was on display at the Akali Dal's unity conclave today where party president Parkash Singh Badal, currently reeling under Chief Minister Amarinder Singh's Badal-specific anti-graft drive, won kudos for covering his religious flanks and equipped the party to engage the enemy with forces united.

More than power-sharing, the strategy and its implementation only underlined

Badal's continuing hegemony over Akali polity's political and religious domains, but this time he did it with the finesse of a glib-talker rather than the crudity of I-conquer-what-I-see.

After spending four years embattled against Badal, Tohra's terms for unity could not have been more humble. He got the SGPC top office and adjustment of his loyalists in nearly similar levels of hierarchy where they were before being summarily bundled out for standing by their mentor in 1999.

"Mera rom-rom dhanvadi hai (Every pore of my body is thankful)," Badal told Badungar on the stage, displaying the great art of soothing the victim during the sacrifice. Badungar, if he winced, kept mum and did not even acknowledge the compliments about his graciousness and magnanimity being showered by Badal.

Political experts said Badal remained a clear winner in the game.

"The Akali Dal chief was always seen as the man with compromise tag since he refined the art of making compromises to advance his cause in polity, while

Tohra was always the radical in the pack. Today, the post-unity scenario leaves Tohra in a position where he has returned to the Akali Dal with his status virtually what it was before 1999. And Badal is deciding when and how much to radicalise the polity," said a senior Akali leader.

Even Tohra had to praise Badal for "great magnanimity which he displayed in achieving unity." Most of the senior Akali politicians that the The Indian
Express spoke to today conceded that Badal holds almost all the cards, and
Tohra is back in Akali Dal on terms that were custom-made for Badal to agree to and for Tohra to save face with.

But those observing the political scenario for decades said the Akali strategy of joining hands to counter the Congress offensive may not really yield the desired results. "Remember that Badal is not up against a traditional politico. Amarinder's style of politicking is something the state has not witnessed ever earlier, and the added bitterness of old friendship gone sour may not be lessened by adding up crowds and power. Vengeance as a component of power-politics has its own momentum," said a senior Congressman.■

July 16, 2003

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Willa Ford: Who's Counting?

"This might be a big letdown to guys," Willa Ford, American model, once told an interviewer, "but I could count the men I've had sex with on the fingers of one hand." Ford was later asked, "If you could change one thing about your body, what would it be?" Her reply? "I'd get a sixth finger!"

(Sources: Blender' Jan/Feb 2004)

Dorian Gray?

A reporter once asked Susan Lucci whether Erica Kane, her character on ABC's "All My Children," would ever become old and gray. "She may," Lucci replied. "I won't." Lucci's character, who was married no less than nine times to six men, was more formally known as Erica Kane Martin Brent Cudahy Chandler Montgomery Montgomery Chandler Marick Marick.

Though Lucci had won People magazine's best soap actress poll, the People's Choice Award, and the Soap Opera Digest Award, until 1999, she had never won an Emmy - despite having been nominated 18 years in a row. On May 21, 1999, she finally won an Emmy for best actress in a daytime drama - and received a four minute standing ovation.

(Sources: Cigar Aficionado, 2001)

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