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'If The Leadership Has A Horse To Ride, All Cadres Cannot Expect To Have It'

In December 2007, Outlook featured a story on Prachanda (The Rado Maoist), chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist, detailing the remarkable change in his lifestyle after he emerged from the bush to join mainstream politics. We said he sports an expensive Rado watch, travels in an airconditioned Pajero, loves his daily two pegs of Johnnie Walker whisky, and has been accused of promoting his children in the party hierarchy. On a cold January morning this year, the Maoist supremo, dressed in a trendy tracksuit, met Outlook's Manoj Dahal and sportingly fielded questions on his new lifestyle, the problems revolutionary parties encounter in maintaining their ideological purity and India's role in Nepal. Excerpts:

Questions have been raised about the gap between the lifestyle of Maoist leaders, including you, and cadres. Is the gap enormous?

We're in multiparty politics now, not in the jungles. The situation is different, issues get raised in a different manner now. We must understand that the notion of equality is relative even within Marxism. If the leadership has a horse to ride, all cadres can't expect to have that.

Yep...All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others

So, the change in lifestyle isn't a big issue for you.

We can't travel on foot in the city, can we? We need a vehicle not for comfort, but out of necessity. I am living in this house (his residence) with comrades (bodyguards) because of security reasons. It doesn't mean that all cadres should live in a house like mine. What we are doing for villagers and cadres is more important than what we wear and how we live. People who criticise us for our lifestyle are aesthetes, mechanical and narrow-minded.