Polls are a theater and politicians the artistes. This trueism has caught the fancy of some youth, deeply into theater and entertainment, in the national capital and they have made the elections the stage to showcase their talent.
Charlie (uses only his first name), a 42-year-old, is one of them and he had been busy reading up his dialogues for the roadside play that his troupe has been enacting this poll season.
At the DDA park on Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Marg in the New Delhi Lok Sabha constituency, Charlie and his group of friends from the Chirag Theatre Group were doing their rehearsal for a show they would be putting up ahead of a poll campaign by the Bharatiya Janatar Party candidate Harsha Vardhan in Chandni Chowk later.
Charlie is deeply immersed in a bit of paper in his hand that has his dialogues on it. Staring at his fellow artiste, Adil Sheikh, Charlie tell him: "Iss Desh Ka Kya Boora Haal Ho Rakka Hai."
With a concern on his expressive face, Adil replied back: "Sab Ko Azma Kar Dekh Liya. Har Koi Desh Ko Loot Liya."
They were belting out the lines from their roadside skit. But Charlie has forgotten his line and quickly refers back to his piece of paper in an awkward manner. And that is enough from the entire group of 10 youngsters to break into a hearty laugh over Charlie's predicament.
The group has been having fun over the past month, joining the poll campaign of BJP candidates from the seven Lok Sabha seats in the national capital. But that alone is not the reason for their enthusiasm. Poll time only means moolah for them.
"I have been doing these acts for the last 15 years now. and our group has been active in theater circuit in the national capital. But the polls season is good time for us to both show our talent at roadside skit that carries an election message and also to earn a quick buck," says Charlie.
The Chirag Theater Group has been "hired on contract" by BJP to perform street plays across the city.
Charile, who passed out of Kirori Mal College 15 years ago, got involved in theater through the Dramatics Society of his college.
"Almost all theater artists, especially youth, consider election time as earn-while-you-learn time. On an average, we get Rs 2,000 per street play and in a single day, we manage to do seven shows,” says Adil.
In the last ten days of campaigning for the polls on April 10, the group expects to make a few laksh of rupees as earnings from political parties this time around.
Apart from BJP, its rivals -- AAP and Congress -- too have roped in hundreds of such artistes from across the country and theater colleges for campaigning.
“We have selected around 150 such artists from across the country, including National School of Drama and various other drama colleges to perform street plays,” BJP national general secretary Vani Tripathi, who is part of a party committee for such methods of campaigning, told The Sunday Standard.
She explained that street plays, one of the traditional method of campaigning, would be used a lot in the election this time around.
“It will kick-start from April 1 in Delhi and six groups would perform five skits, each running for eighteen minutes,” says Tripathi.
The artists have also been asked to interact with people for ten minutes after the show.
Similarly, AAP has already started holding street plays and aggressively promoting the party and their candidates.
“Through the street plays people are being informed about the party and its agenda and there are several groups holding such political satires at various locations,” AAP's national spokesperson Deepak Vajpayee says.
Interestingly, Asmita Theatre Group, which was associated with anti-corruption movement and AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal, has claimed that they have not been promoting AAP or any political parties this election season.
“From the anti-corruption movement to Nirbhaya brutal gang rape protest we have always been upfront and performed several street plays. But we generally don’t perform for any political parties,” Ashmita's director Arvind Gaur says.
This time, the Congress too is not behind. Streets plays have been scheduled for last phase of campaigning ahead of the elections. “The plays are about the various development projects carried by the Congress government,” Congress MP Sandeep Dikshit says.
Leave aside the political parties, the election commission has also roped in various theater groups to perform street plays under voter awareness programme.
The election commission is reaching out to the people so that they can exercise their vote and play an active role in deciding the fate of the seven high-profile Parliamentary seats in the forthcoming election.
“We want voters to come in hordes and take part in the biggest electoral process. We do not want people from any region to to be left behind or feel alienated?” Delhi Chief Electoral Officer Vijay Dev informs.
He says that the EC started organising awareness programmes through 'nukkad nataks' across the city. This time, the special focus is on voters in the national capital with origins in South and North East states.
The move is aimed at increasing the voting percentage in the capital and also to ensure that the people from other regions living in the capital do not feel left out, he adds.
To that end, they have roped in Tollywood singers to send the message across in Delhi's localities inhabited by people from Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
"The nukkad natak will be performed in Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam, and in Bengali and Northeastern states' languages. Some NGOs and various active theater groups are lending a helping hand in the awareness campaigns,” Dev notes.
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