Free Chankya's Chant by Ashwin Sanghi Page A

the municipal council but Gangasagar had also convinced many others to contest the elections on the ABNS platform. He had confidently pronounced that he would make Ikram the mayor.
    ‘The council is hopelessly split along caste and religious lines. Twenty-five per cent of the members are Brahmins, another quarter are the intermediate castes such as the Yadavs, one-fourth are Dalits and the remaining fourth are Muslims,’ explained Gangasagar.
    ‘You have no chance,’ said Agrawalji helplessly.
    But this was politics, not economics. The master of this game was Gangasagar, not Agrawalji.
    ‘Not true. All I need to do is take away five per cent from each of the four blocs. By doing that, I’ll have twenty per cent of the total. The fifth bloc.’
    ‘But you’ll still be twenty per cent, equal to each of the four other blocs,’ argued Agrawalji, not realising that this particular game of chess had already been analysed several moves into its conclusion.
    ‘The other four blocs hate each other. Whoever wants power will have no alternative but to ally themselves with us—the only caste- and religion-neutral outfit,’ said Gangasagar triumphantly.
    ‘But they’d only support you if you agreed that their candidate became mayor. How can you expect to make Ikram mayor?’
    ‘The mayor is elected through the system of a single transferable vote. The game theory involved here is different to an ordinary vote,’ explained Gangasagar. ‘The early bird gets the worm but it’s the second mouse that gets the cheese! I don’t need Ikrambhai to be the favourite —merely the second favourite.’
    ‘How will that help him?’ asked Agrawalji.
    ‘All corporators are required to rank—in order of preference—their choice of all five candidates when they submit their ballot.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘For all the five political blocs, including our own, the first choice will be a candidate from within.’
    ‘Yes. But that merely puts Ikram on equal footing with the other four candidates.’
    ‘Ah, but each corporator must not only indicate his first choice from the five candidates but also indicate his second, third, fourth and fifth preference,’ explained Gangasagar. ‘Given the intense hatred between the other four parties, they would refuse to endorse each other’s candidates as second choice. I simply need to tell them to make Ikram their second choice.’
    ‘How exactly does this process work?’ enquired Agrawalji.
    ‘In round one the votes for the first choice candidates are counted. Obviously all five, including Ikram, will be equal. Given the lack of a clear winner, the second-choice votes will be tallied and added to the count of each candidate. At this stage, Ikram becomes the strongest. The second mouse shall bring home the cheese!’
    ‘I just hope that your mouse doesn’t turn out to be a cat, Ganga,’ said Agrawalji.

    ‘Can any of you tell me what the core philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi was?’
    ‘Ahimsa,’ came the answer from the back. It was a frail and petite thirteen-year-old girl. Her face was rounded and her dark black hair was oiled and pulled back in a plait tied with a red ribbon. Little tendrils that had escaped the torturous ministrations of oiling and being pulled tightly back, hung over her forehead. She wore a dull grey skirt and an insipid blue top—the usual dreary uniform of slum schools. Her complexion, however, was unusually fair for such a setting, and her little white teeth, pink lips and sparkling emerald-green eyes gave her an expression of innocence coupled with intelligence.
    She fiddled nervously with her pencil as Gangasagar looked at her. ‘Very good, Chandini. Can you tell me what that means?’
    ‘Ahimsa means non-violence.’
    ‘Does that mean refusing to fight?’
    ‘No. Ahimsa is not cowardice. It takes a very brave man to face blows head-on.’
    ‘So it’s about getting your way without coming to blows for it?’
    ‘Yes. But you need to have the moral authority to