Weighty influence

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s embattled chief Nitin Gadkari’s weight might have become a butt of jokes on Twitter with author Chetan Bhagat calling him “excess baggage”, and so on. But people who meet Gadkari will discover that he is not that heavy anymore — thanks to bariatric surgery he underwent some time ago. He may have lost some weight and, lately, some credibility, but he is in no way a political lightweight in his homeland. Some farmers in Tamasvada, near Wardha, remember how Gadkari visited the area to oversee the progress on desilting centuries-old nullahs and building check dams on them, even though he had not fully recovered from surgery. “He was here with bandages and all. He was passionate about this,” one of them said.