The mundane business of politics does not involve rallies. The mundane, everyday humdrum of a politician’s life is slugging it out at his (or her) dera. The public comes in, you humour them, assure them of solving their problems, face their complaints, some of them caustic. One small group at a time. There are bigger meetings, yes. But they are “corner meetings” in cities and villages, not rallies.
Rallies are events out of the ordinary. They are necessary, many politicians would say, but not as important in getting votes as the aforementioned boring bit.
But, unlike a rally, the boring bit isn’t as media-friendly. It does not take place at one discrete point in time, where one TV channel DSNG van can cover it. Or where a press photographer can take a still photo of a huge crowd of people. Or where there is a tthaatey maarta hua insanon ka samundar and falak shaghaaf naarey (translated, respectively, as a crackling sea of people and slogans loud enough to puncture the heavens.)
As primates thump their chests and throw their faeces at each other to try to establish who the boss is, the political parties also undertake a similar exercise. And just as that behaviour of the primates is a weak predictor of who will win in the actual brawl for alpha-male, large rallies are also a bit flawed an indicator. Case in point: the Jamaat-e-Islami always could pull in the crowds but could scarcely have been called an electoral heavyweight; even after the dubious elections of 2002, it had to rely on the coattails of the JUI-F to make it to the KP government. Conversely, the ANP continues, despite its far from ideal governance record, to be a popular party in KP on account of its clear line against terror. It would be difficult, however, for it to pull across a large rally specifically for that reason.
Be that as it may, prior to any actual elections, many within the surprisingly ill-informed political commentariat have taken to accepting them as a litmus test like no other. Which has fed into the political parties’ confusion about the same as well. With as media-friendly an event - and as large - as the PTI rally in Lahore and then Karachi, others, specially those who traditionally count the urban middle-classes as confirmed votebanks, like the League, got worried. This, then, led to some irritated tut-tutting to the media: they are not that big, really. Not as big as the Gujranwala rally where Mian Sb is going to show up next and what have you. The icing on the cake is the delicious inexactitude of it all. The media really doesn’t have any way of ascertaining rally sizes. The reporters’ estimates vary from 10,000 to 400,000, both figures quoted in earnest. The newsrooms then arbitrate a number in a manner akin to throwing a dart or, perhaps, project a number entirely on the basis of their own political predilections.
Less can be more, at times. Smaller conventions can have a more committed set of activists who aren’t there for the carnival-like air but, when it comes to the crunch at election time, will be ready to take care of transporting voters to polling stations and generally be pervasive enough to persuade potential voters in the lean time of general political inactivity.
It’s not the size of the rally that counts. It’s the way you use it.