“MR Banerjee is an NRI … He has returned from America, leaving behind a job on Wall Street, where he could have made millions. Instead, he has decided to dedicate his life to the cause of his motherland.”

Mr Banerjee in Anirudh Bhattacharyya’s Candidate is Jaideep (Jay) Banerjee who, soon after marking his 50th birthday, is called into his vice-president’s office at a brokerage firm in New York and given the news that the recession has claimed him. And thus starts what is at first glance a tumultuous ride into Indian electoral politics starting from New Delhi and going all the way to a small town in West Bengal.

Debut author Bhattacharyya sets the theme of his novel in the initial pages when Jaideep is seated next to an MP in a plane en route to India. With the MP profiled as a stereotypical politician with clichéd traits — corpulent, tactless, safari-suited, speaking incorrect English (“Hello, I’m Pankaj Bhandare, MP from Maharashtra. Your goodself being?”) — one can easily imagine the outcome of the story. Knowing exactly what is going to happen is not necessarily a bad thing especially if it has been preceded by a nuanced storyline, vivid character creations and beautifully crafted language, some of which this novel manages to do, and some not.

Unemployed and separated from his wife of 14 years, Jaideep lands at his parents’ house in New Delhi where he intends to be on a long break. But one day, while watching the news on television, he spots Govardhan Ray, his childhood friend and now a minister embroiled in the controversial 1984 riots and hence denied a ticket to contest the Lok Sabha elections.

Jaideep goes to meet Ray who presses him to be the candidate in his place and represent the newly-formed Sonar Bangla Party. After initial reluctance, Jaideep agrees. Why does he acquiesce? The reasons are never spelled out and it is perplexing especially since he and his ilk time and again in The Candidate express their disdain for politicos.

Jaideep’s decision would have seemed more reasonable if Bhattacharyya had rooted it in the desire — like hundreds of real-life US-based Indian nationals who left their cushy jobs to campaign for their respective political parties — to “change the system.” These NRIs were buoyed by the emergence of Aam Aadmi Party and also captivated by Narendra Modi’s slogan of “minimum government, maximum governance.” Ten thousand members of the US-chapter of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party reportedly volunteered in the recently-concluded general election campaign in India.

Anyhow, soon Jaideep is sent off to his constituency Narayanpore where he observes that the fortunes of the township have remained unchanged since Independence. Appalled by his campaign managers’ suggestion of winning the election by arm-twisting, the newbie politico suggests mobile phone electioneering, a nod to the rise in the mobile phone market in rural India.

It is not all smooth sailing for Jaideep. He has to encounter allegations of being an American agent by the Narayanporis and a newspaper article admonishes him for being unappreciative of Rabindra Sangeet, supposedly a crime in the eyes of the Rabindranath Tagore-loving populace.

However, he quickly recovers from these minor tribulations when he comes up with the novel idea of providing electricity to the town a la the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Swades (in the film, Khan is a US-based Indian who returns to his home village and seeing the pitiable conditions there sets up a simple and cost-effective electricity producing plant). With this and other knight-in-shining-armour gestures Jaideep wins over his sceptical constituency despite the presence of formidable opponents.

And out of nowhere Jaideep’s wife and daughter show up to support his election campaign. Once again, it is never clearly explained why his estranged wife has a change of heart. Just as well, since a well wisher tells him, “people here are simple and they don’t trust candidates with broken marriages. Some may argue that if you can’t manage a marriage, how will you manage a constituency?”

As for nuances, the novel drones on and on with election-related information such as campaign costs, allottment of election symbols and the workings of the election campaign. It often reads like ‘Indian Elections for Dummies’.

Character building is also not Bhattacharyya’s forte and he litters his book with thinly-sketched people. For instance, Jaideep’s campaign managers, whom he has inherited from his friend Ray, are a group of suspicious characters. Arindam Sen, the fixer, “is oozing grease, from his well-oiled scalp to his supplicating manner of speaking,” and Anisur Rehman is “of middling height and kohled eyes.” The latter’s job is to gather as much of the Muslim vote as possible on election day.

Then there is the pre-requisite femme fatale journalist thrown into the mix, in the form of Madhubi Majumdar. She is behind the ‘sensational’ news article accusing Jaideep of pooh-poohing Rabindra Sangeet: “Exclusive: NRI candidate damns Tagore. Says Rabindra Sangeet is ‘Ghastly’.” However, he is soon enamoured by the “coquettish correspondent” and her “comeliness” and in what promises to be a sizzling affair that would have been a helpful distraction from some of the tediousness is sadly put to rest by Jaideep’s pangs of conscience. He gets cold feet and remembers that he is still married.

The redeeming part of the book, and which kept me going till the end, was the delightful use of vocabulary and idiomatic expressions, quite a few of which I actually had to look up. Well-constructed sentences, however, are not enough to create memorable prose.

The reviewer is a Dawn staffer

The Candidate

(NOVEL)

By Anirudh Bhattacharyya

Penguin, India

ISBN 9780143422570

306pp.