The battle of Kurukshetra

transition. ‘‘I’ve always dreamt of this,’’ he smiles, eager to rub off his excitement on you. At 34, it’s a major leap. ‘‘I am perhaps the youngest industrialist in India to have a shot at the hustings,’’ he gushes. He was also very young when he went to the Supreme Court to demand the fundamental right to fly the national flag when the one he’d hoisted atop his factory was removed by an IAS officer. The long-drawn battle that spanned a decade, finally ended on January 23 this year with the SC granting him his wish. Today he and his staff sport the tiranga. All the time.

The poll battle, he says, hasn’t been foisted on him. It’s a conscious decision. ‘‘God’s given me everything I could want, now it’s time to pay back. Let people give me one chance, I’ll work so hard that the next time they will elect me without any prompting,’’ he feeds you his poll pitch. He’s an old hand at seeking votes. ‘‘I used to campaign for my father O P Jindal in the ’90s.’’ A one-time MP from Kurukshetra in 1996, Jindal senior is now the sitting MLA from Hissar, the city from where the family started its steel business. This battle is not only about following in the footsteps of his father—Jindal senior built a house here in a record one-and-half months soon after he decided to contest in 1996—but also about bettering him.

The youngest of nine siblings, this trained pilot is his dad’s blue-eyed boy. ‘‘My brothers too are very fond of me,’’ he smiles. And then he casually slips in a mention of his wife Shallu, a Kuchipudi dancer from the Oswal family, and two children.

Returning to his favourite topic, the polls, he trips over words as he outlines his grand plans for the seat. ‘‘It’s the land of Mahabharata, I’ll make it a centre of learning with an IIT, IIM, and medical college besides turning it into an international tourist destination.’’

Mention the work done by the Chautala government and he shrugs: ‘‘I don’t see any sea change here, it’s just the same.’’ Equally unfazed is he by the politics of caste. ‘‘The Haryanvis are very shrewd, you can’t take them for a ride,’’ he waves a hand, switching to shudh Haryanvi to rub in his son-of-the-soil antecedents. One thing that does worry him though is his rival’s muscle power. ‘‘I hope the EC will keep a close watch here,’’ he knits his brows even as a gunman, one of the several present in the house, saunters in with a message.

A sportsman, Naveen is approaching the poll battlefield the way he did skeet shooting and polo. Today he’s the captain of the national skeet shooting team. He’s equally adept at polo, steering the Jindal polo team to victory at the Indian Open in November last year. ‘‘I lead from the front, I want to be a participant, not a spectator,’’ he carries on relentlessly, unmindful of his croaking throat.

A business graduate from the University of Texas, Dallas, his poll strategy is convenient: ‘‘I don’t think it’ll be possible for me to visit the 900 plus villages in my constituency, so I’ll follow the 80:20 principle. Do 20 per cent of the work and the rest 80 per cent gets done.’’

And no, he won’t be sacrificing the Page 3 life for this one or vice versa. ‘‘I know, I know, you’ve to pay a price for everything, but I’ll live my life to the hilt by being less lazy and more productive.’’ So he’ll do it all, right from walking the treadmill (it’s parked in his dining room), exercising his vocal chords to attending calls from ‘‘demanding’’ Delhi friends and garnering votes.