In the noise and chaos of today's politics, we forget that it was not always like this.

But first, what the politics was in earlier times:

In the beginning, Indian politics was a playground of the rich and refined. They were scions of famous families. They studied in Cambridge and Oxford. In private lives, they were more comfortable with English language then their own mother tongues. Or they conversed in the most scholarly of Hindi Bhasha. Of course they (well at least most of them) had the best interest of their people at heart but still.....

They were too different from the people whom they claimed to represent.

And then entered a rustic man called Devilal who won his first elections from Sirsa on a Congress ticket in 1952. This man finally became the first citizen of Haryana state.

He was so different from the other leading leaders in the country.

For once, we had a popular leader who spoke and behaved like a true farmer. It appeared as if he really had experienced first-hand the problems of farmers when he used to talk about them.

As if he himself must had ploughed the land, harvested the wheat. As if he too had once anxiously scanned the skies for wet clouds with eyes constricted due to sun's harsh glare while wiping sweat from his brow.

He was one of them. He was a farmer.

It was Devilal who first started the practice of awarding government compensation to farmers in the event of a natural disaster. In 1978, he provided relief compensation to farmers whose crops were ruined in a hail-storm.

When Devilal became India's deputy prime minister, he was the center-theme of various jokes among the glitteratti about his passion for his buffaloes. Delhi sophisticates groaned and sighed when he made it clear that the farmers need to be welcomed in the government hotels.

Undoubtedly for a champagne-chiffon crowd, Devilal's policies must had appeared really rustic and weird.

But we forget that even now, whatever be our status as a IT superpower, India is first and foremost a magnified version of a dusty rural countryside. Tau Devilal was just trying to bring the real India into the national mainstream. 

Or perhaps he was trying to bring the false India into the mainstream of Indian life!