Lifting sacks, serving tea, making rotis, working in fields: It feels like elections

BEING A “commoner” at election time can be backbreaking work. Ask Naveen Jindal. On Thursday, the Congress-turned-BJP leader, its Kurukshetra candidate, and an industrialist who declared combined assets with his wife of Rs 300 crore plus in 2019, was captured loading a sack of grain onto a truck.

Or Hema Malini. On April 12, the perfectly groomed BJP Mathura candidate and actor, often accused of being an “absentee MP”, was seen in a wheat field, holding a sickle in her hand, ostensibly harvesting the crop.

Over in Ghaziabad, Congress candidate Dolly Sharma cooked rotis on an earthen stove while canvassing on April 11. It is hard to say if anyone is taken in, but a similar photo shoot in 2019 had certainly not hurt Malini, who had won by 2.93 lakh-vote margin.

Mathura votes on April 26, and there may still be more field trips ahead for the 75-year-old, whose attendance record in Parliament in her second term (2019-2024) was all of 49%, among the lowest.

Malini is facing Mukhesh Dhangar of the Congress, who a day before her video had shared one of his collecting straw, tying it into a bundle and lifting it on his back. Dhangar’s video was accompanied by the text, “Jo neta zameen se juda hota hai, wahi kisan ka dukh samjhega. AC mein baithne wala kya janega kisan ki takleefen (Only a down-to-earth leader understands the pain of a farmer. How can a person used to living in AC comfort be aware of the farmer’s plight)?”

Dhangar, an MBA and a Congress state general secretary, who was apparently a last-minute choice for the seat, also challenged Malini to a joint, hour-long harvesting session. “I’m a farmer’s son, I know how it works. I’m a son of the soil from Braj Bhoomi… Hemaji is a pravasi (outsider), I’m a Brajwasi,” Dhangar