The exit polls on the recently conducted Parliamentary elections are out and all of them give Narendra Modi and BJP the green signal to rule from Delhi after 16 May. The differences between the various polls is the extent of victory and we do not have to wait too long for the results! Let the media and the psephologists explain their findings but I'd like to go through some of the main players who'd lost the plot in the course of the electioneering which, of course, is a personal viewpoint. Here I go:-
(a) Rahul Gandhi.
The poor guy has quite a few instances of misdemeanour where his lack of maturity showed through and
must have made an average Indian shudder as to what the country would become if entrusted in his hands
just because of an accident of birth. Let me list them:-
(i) the tearing up of a draft legislation in front of an embarrassed Manmohan Singh which was being
covered extensively by the media. It's okay that we all know that the Prime Minister held the position
courtesy his family but his age should never have been humiliated. It's just not acceptable. And why
wasn't he deployed for campaigning? A case of being dumped before demiting office, now that his
utility is over?
(ii) calling the Gujarat model of development as 'toffee model'. The statistics held by the central
government and above all, the people of Gujarat, were being scoffed at by that single remark. It
clearly showed his lack of understanding of key issues.
(iii) saying in one of his rallies that there will be a carnage off 22,000 people if Modi were to be the
PM. That was the limit! But who were his script writers and who were his advisers? They need
to be hauled on burning coal!
(b) Mulayam Singh.
The day when neither he nor his son - I'd thought that he'd would be refreshingly different because
of his age - contradict Azam Khan when he made that stupid remark that Kargil was won by the
Muslims of the Indian Army. What became clear was their brazen minority appeasement for votes!
(c) Sonia Gandhi.
She was always attacking Modi for the riots and many other things. Many a time I got this
impression that she's parroting her speeches in Hindi without grasping their meaning. And what
amazes me is that she never touched upon the legislative pieces that she'd worked hard to pass
through parliament like the Food Security Bill, the Right to Information Bill or the Right to
Education Bill. Or was it deliberate knowing fully well that these pieces of legislation would be
a heavy drain on the state exchequer and were really not viable? But whatever said and done,
the RTI definitely has been appropriate and timely to some extent but it needs to cover everyone
for total effect.
(d) Mamata Banerjee.
Her swipe that had she been in Delhi, she'd have seen to it that Modi was sent out of Bengal by
the first available flight dragging him by having a rope tied around his waist - probably, a case of
bad translation of her thoughts in Bengali - when he questioned her 'Poribortan' of Bengal
after taking over from the CPM, brought her down in my esteem. Perhaps, she's a reason to
fume when her personal integrity was being brought under scrutiny for no rhyme or reason but
she's shown, time and again, that she doesn't take criticism well.
I can keep going on and on about the leaders of each political dispensation but would then make it too long and unwieldy and hence, I desist.
Tailpiece.
Manishankar Aiyar must be ruing the day when he'd crassly said that the PM's chair wasn't vacant for Modi but that there was a vacancy of a tea vendor at the Congress' office at New Delhi. Who'll have the last laugh? And proverbially, he who laughs last, laughs best!
(a) Rahul Gandhi.
The poor guy has quite a few instances of misdemeanour where his lack of maturity showed through and
must have made an average Indian shudder as to what the country would become if entrusted in his hands
just because of an accident of birth. Let me list them:-
(i) the tearing up of a draft legislation in front of an embarrassed Manmohan Singh which was being
covered extensively by the media. It's okay that we all know that the Prime Minister held the position
courtesy his family but his age should never have been humiliated. It's just not acceptable. And why
wasn't he deployed for campaigning? A case of being dumped before demiting office, now that his
utility is over?
(ii) calling the Gujarat model of development as 'toffee model'. The statistics held by the central
government and above all, the people of Gujarat, were being scoffed at by that single remark. It
clearly showed his lack of understanding of key issues.
(iii) saying in one of his rallies that there will be a carnage off 22,000 people if Modi were to be the
PM. That was the limit! But who were his script writers and who were his advisers? They need
to be hauled on burning coal!
(b) Mulayam Singh.
The day when neither he nor his son - I'd thought that he'd would be refreshingly different because
of his age - contradict Azam Khan when he made that stupid remark that Kargil was won by the
Muslims of the Indian Army. What became clear was their brazen minority appeasement for votes!
(c) Sonia Gandhi.
She was always attacking Modi for the riots and many other things. Many a time I got this
impression that she's parroting her speeches in Hindi without grasping their meaning. And what
amazes me is that she never touched upon the legislative pieces that she'd worked hard to pass
through parliament like the Food Security Bill, the Right to Information Bill or the Right to
Education Bill. Or was it deliberate knowing fully well that these pieces of legislation would be
a heavy drain on the state exchequer and were really not viable? But whatever said and done,
the RTI definitely has been appropriate and timely to some extent but it needs to cover everyone
for total effect.
(d) Mamata Banerjee.
Her swipe that had she been in Delhi, she'd have seen to it that Modi was sent out of Bengal by
the first available flight dragging him by having a rope tied around his waist - probably, a case of
bad translation of her thoughts in Bengali - when he questioned her 'Poribortan' of Bengal
after taking over from the CPM, brought her down in my esteem. Perhaps, she's a reason to
fume when her personal integrity was being brought under scrutiny for no rhyme or reason but
she's shown, time and again, that she doesn't take criticism well.
I can keep going on and on about the leaders of each political dispensation but would then make it too long and unwieldy and hence, I desist.
Tailpiece.
Manishankar Aiyar must be ruing the day when he'd crassly said that the PM's chair wasn't vacant for Modi but that there was a vacancy of a tea vendor at the Congress' office at New Delhi. Who'll have the last laugh? And proverbially, he who laughs last, laughs best!
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