Priyanka Chaturvedi: Why not move to something bigger?

A 'purushi' party's latest female entrant is now its upneta. Former Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi on ditching the national for local, being unapologetically ambitious and not replying to 'every naysayer who comes my way'

"What's wrong with wanting to move up the ladder?" Priyanka Chaturvedi is chatting with us at her Goregaon West home, looking very much the driven corporate rofessional she once used to be. The only thing close to 'neta' on her person are the beads on her hands and rings on her fingers. The rings, she says, come from her mother, a God-fearing woman, who for the last eight years has been making Tuesday visits to Siddihivinayak. One Rudraksh mala is from the Shankaracharya of Dwaraka, and an orange thread on the right hand was tied when she joined the Shiv Sena last week. The white bead string was given to her at the Nashik kumbh to keep her calm. "I am not sure how much it has helped," she says.

In the last one week, the 40-year-old has been accused of being selfish, hypocritical and, perhaps worse, inconsequential.

Having represented the Indian National Congress as its national spokesperson for four years, she raised a storm - on and off the web - when, on April 18, she announced that she was quitting the party after it reinstated men who she had accused of sexually harassing her in Mathura. That she joined Shiv Sena, a regional party who allies with the Congress's nemesis Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - Chaturvedi has in her political career criticised both parties, in fact, she even filed an FIR against a BJP supporter who had threatened her and her daughter - brought on allegations that the move was less ideological and more about not getting a Lok Sabha ticket.

Chaturvedi, who also runs a book review blog, has on her list The Dashing Ladies of Shiv Sena, by Tarini Bedi, and Prannoy Roy's The Verdict. Pic/Ashish Rane

This charge, she says, is amusing. "I am 40, I could have got a ticket at 45. That's not old for the political space. If it was about a ticket, I would have hopped parties before nominations ended in Maharashtra. Some say, I moved to the Sena and will contest from Uttar Pradesh, but why would I want to do that?" She admits she wanted a larger voice within the party. But, she thinks after the work she did, she deserved it. If not electorally, within the organisation. "Why should someone put in their heart and not aspire to move to something bigger?"

Also Read: Stung, Congress torchbearer spurns party, turns to Shiv Sena

Born to parents who moved from Mathura to Mumbai in 1965, Chaturvedi pointedly talks about how, joining politics was a move driven by wanting to make a change in the world.

Chaturvedi with Koli women ahead of an Aditya Thackeray rally in Worli on Thursday. Pic/Ashish Raje

Engaged at 19 and married at 21, she was the first woman in her large family - she has three sisters and one brother - to start working while pursuing a BCom degree from Juhu's Narsee Monjee College. "There was an event management firm located on the ground floor of the building where my father had an office space. I told him I wanted to work there part-time and he, could easily keep a watch. He was aghast at the idea. But, it was my mother and grandmother who stood by my decision. They said, 'let her try it out, if it's affecting her studies, she can give up the job'."

Chaturvedi last week, sharing the stage with Sena youth wing chief Aditya Thackeray. Pic/Rane Ashish

After college, post a stint in Channel [V] as coordintor for their On Air Promos, in 2008 she started MPower, a firm for recruitment in the print, radio and digital space, which she continues to be the proprietor of. Successful, in 2011, she was a part of the Indian School of Business's 10,000 Women programme, a scholarship programme by Goldman Sachs for women entrepreneurs. But, 26/11, she says, changed her. Along with other Mumbaikars, for three days she was cooped up at home, watching the attacks on television, helpless. "My husband was returning from Bengaluru, and we heard of a taxi blast near the airport. The timing matched." While her own family was not affected by the attacks, Chaturvedi got the sense that pursuing a job for money no longer made sense. "Seeing families in pain, Taj and Oberoi being treated that way - these are landmarks in the city - for some strange reason, it hit me directly."

This is when Chaturvedi's social media journey took off.

Having run a well-known book review blog on Wordpress until then, she along with other women bloggers, started calling in for financial help for the victims, to pay the school fees of children or skilling the women who'd been left without an income after their husbands' deaths. In 2009, she along with others, also set up an NGO in Goregaon called Prayaas Charitable Trust, which started working towards the education of street children, by enrolling them in BMC schools, supplementing the education if they were weak in a certain subject or giving them vocational training. The work, which she calls extremely satisfying, was what brought the Youth Congress to her doorstep, asking her to join them. The next year, her political journey began.

Yet, with no money, and no background in politics, her family did question the move. "My husband was in shock. He said I will not survive in this space. It's a dirty world and I would not be allowed to grow," says Chaturvedi, while requesting the house help to bring her a glass of cold coffee, if any is left from what's offered to us.

For a while, she tried juggling it all, the NGO work, family time and work at the organisation - she rarely names the Congress - but was warned against spreading herself too thin by her husband. Realising that she would not be able to give it her 100 per cent, she decided to leave Prayaas. "It would have been unfair to continue using that space to build my personality".

But, work is personal.

It is time away from family and young kids. The job as Congress's national spokesperson, kept her on the move. In Madhya Pradesh, in Gujarat, in Uttar Pradesh. She'd come home on the weekends.

"When my son gave his Class X board exams this year, I wasn't there for a single paper he wrote. When he expressed the desire to move to an IB school, I did not accompany him for the entrance exam." Her daughter - who, once the interview is over, steps into the room during the photoshoot, expressing an interest in buying a DSLR to pursue photography - was unwell for a week. "The Karnataka elections had just happened. I had a TED talk at IIM Kashipur and was scheduled to attend the Bangalore Lit Fest. Then, I had to go to Delhi for an event at SRCC. My child was in and out of fever and I was not around. When I returned, I realised she couldn't breathe. At the hospital, she was diagnosed with pneumonia and she was there for over a month. My husband said, 'you have already committed to so much, continue what you are doing'.

Also Read: Elections 2019: Priyanka Chaturvedi appointed Shiv Sena 'Upneta'

"I did end up going to the IIM talk, but all this came back to me. I felt that I was somehow losing grip over things that matter most to me. I was giving my 200 per cent to a party that doesn't value my dignity."

Chaturvedi tears up, but doesn't want to be photographed. A recent press photograph of her crying, she feels, has painted her as a 'bechari'. She will have none of it. "I think it's time I moved on."

Discussing the pictures that mid-day wants to take of her, Chaturvedi remarks "that's badass. You want me to look like a boss." But, she doesn't mind, not even remotely.

Having moved to Mumbai, politically and physically, Chaturvedi has more time on her hands. The interview continues for 90 minutes, but she's happy to talk and discuss her next, rather controversial move, Shiv Sena. The day she quit Congress, the saffron party welcomed her into the fold.

On Saturday, in fact, she was appointed upneta, or deputy leader. Where this places her in the organisational hierarchy, she doesn't know. But, under the Sena president, currently Uddhav Thackeray, are 13 senior leaders, followed by deputy leaders, as per the party's ranking. To those who may have denied her a party role, she says, "There'll be 100 people out there judging on everything I get or don't get in the times to come, and I am not answerable to every single person."

Chaturvedi comes with her own history of Twitter spats with Sena. Still, she argues, there's good work that the party is doing. With no cue or question, she first attacks the charge that the Sena is misogynist.

"Google and tell me what misogyny have they promoted? Of the Sena corporators in the BMC, nearly 50% are women. And in every single assembly at the ward level, they have male and female leaders, not reducing women to ghettos in the mahila wing. Lastly, the corporation schools give free sanitary napkins, the absence of which is a compelling reason why girls drop out of school." She argues that the Sena gives women self-defence classes, that they tell women "do what you want, stay out till as long as you want, dress as you want." To our raised eyebrows, she says, "that's a BJP thing, not a Shiv Sena thing... reducing women to the dress they wear."

On the charge of its Hindutva agenda, she argues that Sena has spoken up against the beef ban. That, if the Congress can pledge 80 per cent of local jobs and licences to locals in Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka, why is what the Sena doing seen through a different lens? "When they say locals, they mean people who are born and brought up here". The son of soil, she argues, is someone who will call himself or herself a Maharashtrian. The largely North Indian residents of Dindoshi, she cites, are an example of people who contribute to the state economically. "My parents are also migrants. Mumbai continues to vote for Shiv Sena. Behrampada, which is Muslim dominated, chooses corporators that are Sainik, Versova which is North India and Millat Nagar which is Muslim, chooses Sainiks. They look at who is working for them."

Her voice is that of the liberal woman. She speaks of how Mumbai's women have more mobility and claim to open spaces than any other woman in India. She talks of friend Aditya Thackeray's ban on single-use plastic. It's what the city needed post 26/7. How, his proposed extended nightlife for Mumbai will not just make the city safer, but create greater employment.

Asked if she's been appraised of this data in the last one week, she laughs, but says no. She's done her own research and it's taken a while. So, then does the Sena need her to talk about the good work they are doing and bring an erudite voice to their narrative?

That call, she says, is left to the party. There have been no deals, "I have come with an open mind."

Chaturvedi used to be at loggerheads with Sena in certain spheres. And, ideology, she says, doesn't change overnight. "It's not that if I was with Congress, I agreed with them 100 per cent. That's not true here either. In fact, both Uddhavji and Aditya have said there's no need to delete any of the tweets where I have attacked them."

She is an avid reader. As a kid, she says, she'd stay up till 3 am with a book, only to wake up at 6 am to head to school. On the go, she'd read at the airport, on flights, any time she'd get. How then does she reconcile with the Sena and Aditya, whose first political move was to ban Rohinton Mistry's Such a Long Journey when he debuted in 2010, for its criticism of Sena founder Bal Thackeray?

It's about second chances, she argues. "Aditya from then on has carved a niche in various areas of governance. In a political journey, you can look back and move on." She deflects, pointing at the MNS and the Nayantara Sahgal incident. She says even the Congress has had a history of bans. "It would be wrong of me to judge Aditya on the debut instance and totally overlook the good work he has done."

Her day has become easier, for now at least. Just recently, she went with her daughter to watch Kalank. "It's a Kalank on Bollywood," she laughs, adding that she wanted to leave mid-way, but had to stay, because the daughter was enjoying it. Instead, she spent her time, writing a column for a weekly magazine. The evening that we meet her, she's set for a rally in Worli.

But, if you think Chaturvedi will work on her offline presence and lose her online touch, she comes back with, "I have created that space for myself and I will not allow anyone to take it away from me. Judge me, malign me, do what you want. I shall cede no space."

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