Panaji: Days after a tumultuous series of events in New Delhi led to the woolen muffler-covered, Maruti Wagon R-driving Arvind Kejriwal to address India as the country’s most “simple”, “humble” chief minister, the erstwhile claimants to the crown of “simplicity” appear to be fighting back using the media and grandstanding.

First a leading pink paper ran a factually incorrect story extolling Goa’s Chief Minister, ManoharParrikar’s simplicity last week.

This was followed by two TV news features on a leading Hindi and Marathi news channel owned by the same media group. The first, lauded Goa chief minister ManoharParrikar’s populist achievements against newbie Kejriwal. The second was a full-fledged interview with the thrust on, yes, simplicity and how it works for the Goa chief minister. Finally, riding on this coverage, came a certificate of endorsement from the BharatiyaJanata Party’s prime ministerial candidate,NarendraModi. Modi used Goa as a backdrop and Parrikar’s shoulder as the support to take his maiden snipe at the AamAadmiParty.

“Imagine what would happen had Manohar Parrikar been in Delhi. The country would have known about his good work but what can we do, he is in Goa and media can’t see anything beyond Delhi.” Modi’s remarks strategically followed the print and television media coverage on the Simplicity Chronicles.

In the complex war of perception fought between the savvy BJP and eager AAP, the virtue of simplicity is emerging as one of the key battle zones.

Before the advent of AAP and the touch of naive-seeming asceticism they brought to politicking, Parrikar was seen as one of the original Simple-Looking Simon amongst contemporary Indian netas.

The comparisons between Parrikar and Kejriwal, as far as appearance and backgrounds are indeed similar.

The disheveled, invariably one-day-stubbledParrikar looks like a slightly surly AmolPalekar, once the cinematic silhouette of the quintessential common man of the 70s and 80s. Kejriwal, on the other hand would have been an ideal inspiration for R K Laxman’s common man, had the legendary cartoonist started his career around now.

Both are IIT graduates from humble middle-class backgrounds. While Kejriwal was born in a baniya family, Parrikar was born in a Gaud Saraswat Brahmin caste – a small, but powerful minority, which has decided modern Goa’s fate both politically and economically over decades.

As political opponents, both Parrikar and Kejriwal used electricity department frauds to make their early mark in state politics.

A young-in-the-years Parrikar’s solid and dogged campaign against alleged corruption by former Congress power minister MauvinGodhino  in the early and mid-Nineties, is legendary in this part of the world. Much like Kejriwal’s campaign against private power companies is in New Delhi. Both IIT-ians effectively used their technical skillset to split open and simplify the complex power scams, before exposing them to an electorate, jolting voters out of their complacence.

Focused, disciplined and innovative, both electorally demolished the ruling Congress in their respective states, reducing the party to a single lame digit. In Goa’s 40-member unicameral legislature, the Congress was reduced to 9 MLAs after the 2012 rout. In the comparatively larger 70-member legislative assembly in Delhi, the Sheila Dixit-led party was shrunk to an even smaller digit -8.

But in these times of competitive simplicity, comparisons between Kejriwal and Parrikar end here. From here on, a relatively-untested Kejriwalis far ahead ofParrikar as far as the race for simplicity goes.

Apart from a string of in-your-face U-turns by Parrikar on critical issues related to removal of casinos, nailing those mining magnates responsible for the Rs 35,000 crore illegal mining scam, etc, the BJP’s “Parrikar as Simple Simon” argument falls flat. The chief minister’s brazen pandering to the casino, mining lobbies and real estate lobbies in his third stint as chief minister has led to the unmaking of Parrikar’s popular image in the state already. Facts which the national media tends to gloss over consistently.

The article mentioned before is clearly a case of a myth which is in the process of being manufactured with wrong facts. Take this paragraph for example.

“Ever since Kejriwal’s conspicuous assault on VIP culture has been hogging the headlines the BJP has rediscovered the virtues of its very own ex-IITian chief minister, who drives himself to work in his own modest small Maruti car, doesn’t use the red beacon and abjures official accommodation.”

Fact: The Goa chief minister does not drive to work “in his own modest small Maruti car”. Parrikar’s ride to work and home is a swanky white Hyundai SUV, Santa Fe which costs upwards of Rs 23.60 lakh. As leader of Opposition and later as chief minister Parrikar had a Toyota Innova assigned for himself. Parrikar claimed back then that he felt the need for the Innova, a big car, because fast moving trucks in the mining area were a scary proposition. For the Santa Fe, a car he chose sometime last year, no such logic was offered. And anyway mining has been banned in Goa for sometime now.

Fact: Parrikar’s car does have a red beacon and he does use it on some occasions. But it is to the chief minister’s credit that he does not see the beacon and the siren as a birthright. His cavalcade strength ranges from none to two pilot vehicles (occasionally), front and back, a practice even his predecessor Digambar Kamat followed.

Fact: Parrikar does use his official residence regularly. His nightpad however is an upscale apartment in a highrise on the outskirts of the city, where his elder son also resides. Security at the official residence in fact has been upped by several notches after Parrikar took over the reins of the state.

The stories about the chief minister’s austerity in the national media do not factor in facts like the more than three separate receptions hosted by Parrikar, when his son Abhijaat got married last month. The receptions were staggered based on groupings, which included officials and media, for Parrikar’sPanaji constituents and general invitees and a carefully weaned select audience.

Nor do they account for the one lakh squaremetres of land his son, Abhijaat, along with a partner, purchased in the remote village of Netravali, more than 70 kms south of Panaji. The huge chunk of agricultural land, which was mutated within a day, was purchased soon after the Goa government announced that the back-of-the-beyond village of Netravali would be notified as a model village for “dairy production”, upping the real estate profile of the area.

For the record, the Anti-Corruption Bureau, which operates under the vigilance ministry headed by Parrikar, after a preliminary probe has denied any wrongdoing in the deal.

It’s that simple. Really.

The author can be contacted at mayabhushan@gmail.com