Seven habits of highly effective netas

Habit 1: Learn the fine art of being misquoted: The secret is to be quoted for an outrageous remark and then be acquitted in the Supreme Court of Misquotes. You kill two birds with one stone: you get to make a wild accusation and then free publicity. Say, you arouse passions at a rally by shouting, "Maro, mat jaane do." When pulled up for your hate speech, your gentler avatar tells the media: "I have been misquoted. I was advocating peace and said 'Maro mat, jaane do', but the media twisted the comma in the sentence." You win both ways - the hardliners admire you, the softliners plump for your pacifist stand.

Habit 2: Leap before they look: As the sports company says, just do it. Let the spokespeople take care of the consequences. The brain is peculiarly logical, and so if you stop and ponder you will never have the courage to ride roughshod over people's aspiration. Now where would that leave a true-blue neta? For example, if you don't think long and hard about the word "revenge", you can always fling it around in a riot-torn area. In any case, you can always hone up on Habit 1, which will take care of Habit 2.

Habit 3: Never let facts affect the agenda: Whether it's history, geography, statistics or your first-ball duck in the college cricket match, never allow details about fact and truth to cloud the big picture you have in mind. An effective leader is someone who makes history, alters geography, manipulates statistics and bribes someone to take out the offending score-sheet of the said match from the records. The issue here is the fact of your vision, not the facts that could erode the credibility of that agenda.

Habit 4: Stock up on their words: An effective leader needs to be communicative. So you need to constantly upgrade your vocabulary. Start with simple nouns - like puppy, pig, fox. Then go on to complex adjectives like napunsak and feku and finally graduate to phrases like Dus numbari, maut ka saudagar, khooni panja, chop to pieces. And don't forget, even innocent stuff like 'prince' and 'tea vendor' can become topics of lengthy TV discussions. From chest measurements to virility, everything's game.

Habit 5: Age is just a number: Effective politicians have long realised that the only age that matters is the one that makes it compulsory for all candidates to be at least 25 years when he or she starts the scramble for the Vidhan Sabha or Lok Sabha. Beyond that, the years don't matter. At 85, you could still be called a Young Turk or an Amul baby. At 93, you could still win the best parliamentarian award even if you are incontinent and snoring through the commotions in the Lok Sabha.

Habit 6: Know the statistics: You may have failed your Class II maths exam, but you must know your numbers. Not to worry though, it doesn't matter if things don't add up. And you are perfectly correct when you say two and two make five. But you must be able to embrace numbers like "1.78 lakh crore" and fling it at your opponents. Now quickly calculate this: how much is your 10 per cent of a 10-km asphalt road to be constructed in x number of years, where x stands for whatever you choose it to be?

Habit 7: Give priority to family values: All effective politicians believe in family values. Family includes father, mother, son, daughter, grandson, granddaughter, cousin, uncle, in-laws of all sorts, even sons that you have only now acknowledged after three decades. Remember, one relative is 10 times more valuable than your closest associate of 30 years' standing.

Free Run is a fortnightly look at alternate realities joel.rai@bsmail.in