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You are here: Rediff Home » India » Votes09 » Interview » Mallika Sarabhai, Independent LS candidate |
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Even given her lineage, it came as a surprise when she announced her candidature in the Lok Sabha elections against no less than the Bharatiya Janata Party's [Images] L K Advani [Images] from Gandhinagar in Gujarat. In an emailed interview with rediff.com, Mallika Sarabhai outlined what motivated her to take the plunge, finally.
What do you intend to achieve by contesting the Lok Sabha polls as an independent?
So many of us for so long have urged clean people to go into politics. I got fed up of urging others. So many people and groups had been telling me. So here I am.
How do you rate your chances of winning against the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate L K Advani? Is your fight merely symbolic?
No, it is not symbolic but yes it is. This is going to be a fight to win, but a fight that is transparent where I will try innovative means of reaching people through people and by sticking to rules and my integrity. I invite all others in the constituency to fight it as transparently. Every rupee I raise and spend will be there for all to check. I shall not resort to personal slander or to threats and bribes. The process is as important as the goal.
Winning? Let's see.
I have contemplated it for years and always felt I was more effective outside the system. The degeneration in political life and the stridency of the divisive forces perhaps tipped the balance.
I will now if I lose.
Watch this space! Of course I have to be inventive and innovative. I have only Rs 25 lakh that I can spend and that too I haven't raised yet.
I have made an appeal through my web site http://mallikasarabhai.in and from door to door. I am asking people who believe in this fight for a secular peoples' India to contribute and become the campaign.
I will have to be. I am preparing shoulders to cry on.
Papa believed in nuclear non-proliferation. So do I.
Gandhinagar is very diverse. The rural middle class and poor; degraded lands and insecure livelihoods, urban slums with huge issues of health, lack of basic infrastructure, huge middle class who fear their safety, who don't have access to first rate education. Women across the spectrum whose issues of safety and respect haven't been tackled or even heard. Rape, murder, suicide and violence soaring -- are some of the issues.
I repose my trust in the aam-aadmi and, equally importantly, the aam-aurat.
Yes, and that of Ammu Swaminathan, Anasuya Sarabhai, Mridula Sarabhai, Subhashini Sahgal and Srilata Swaminathan. And all the others on both sides of my family who may not have fought elections but spent their lives fighting for justice and an equitable India for ALL Indians.
Politics need not be dirty. It need not be self-serving and vile. Our current politicians have made it so. We need to take a vacuum cleaner at them.
Everyone that I can inspire and many whom I don't yet know.
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