Half-way through the election process, with polling over in 235 seats and reports suggesting that there has never been such heavy voting in the country, Narendra Modi said the Congress has broken out into cold sweat, so much so that the mother-son duo are in doubt whether they will be able to retain their own seats in Parliament. He was addressing a large audience via 3-D telecast on Sunday evening, in an effort to touch almost all constituencies in the time left before the elections are over.
The rising tide of hope among the people has filled the Congress with panic and in just ten days of her arrival in Amethi, Smriti Irani and the BJP workers have given the dynasty a run for its money. Rahul Gandhi is in a sweat, he mocked, and his mother had to run to the constituency in an effort to bolster his chances. She said, “Indira ji gave you Rajiv and you ‘sambhaloed’ him. In 2004, I gave you Rahul and you must take care of him”. So now there is a question mark over the presence of the mother son duo in the new Parliament, and this is because Smriti Irani and the karyakartas have done it, he pointed out, adding, “did anyone ask (them for) accounts before? This is the strength of democracy”.
The book, The Accidental Prime Minister, has made it clear that in the past 10 years, all decisions of the Government were taken elsewhere, it was a “ma-bete ki sarkar”. Yet today they are trying to create an impression that some prince on a white while horse will solve all the problems of the country; this is a joke. Rahul Gandhi and his mother have been saying that there is one man who says he has a magic wand and will solve all problems, and then the sister also said the same thing. Knowing full well that the taunts were aimed at him, Narendra Modi told his audience, “I used to wonder who this jadugar is; I could not think, so I thought I will wait till they say it”.
It was America’s Wall Street Journal, he said sombrely, that exposed that this jadugar is one man who had just Rs 1 lakh four years ago and could not study beyond 10 class, this man came on a white horse (an allusion to his marriage) with a magic wand in hand, and in just four years became worth Rs 300 crore. “Is there any such magician in your villages and towns,” he asked rhetorically. So much has now come out about this family, he said, “but are they giving any explanation? Why are they silent? Daal mein kuch kala,” he said, adding that in fact the entire daal was black, and this was understandable for those with coal-stained hands.
The BJP leader thus for the first time attributed responsibility for the Coal-gate scam on the Congress president, on the basis of the revelations by Sanjaya Baru and former Coal Secretary PC Parakh. Asserting that there is much to think about beyond elections, he blamed the Congress for making a joke of the poor who, he said, do not exist merely to “fill your vote coffers”. Humanity is above politics, the BJP’s Prime Ministerial contender said, but from the time of Indira Gandhi, the party has been doing politics in the name of the poor. Now, when Rahul bhaiya says there is no such thing as poverty and poverty is only a state of mind, it won’t wash in the country at large. The Congress vice president thinks of poverty as a tourist destination and photo-opportunity; he has never understood the pain of poverty. But the BJP is inspired by the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi and Ram Manohar Lohia who said we must serve the last person in the line or our duty is unfulfilled.
A farmer with two or three sons today knows that only one can sustain himself on agriculture, so this means that one or two sons, roughly two-thirds of the village youth, will have to seek jobs in the city. So India needs other avenues of growth, it needs development, industry, for opportunity, he said. Lambasting the Congress propensity to make promises it has no intention of fulfilling, the BJP veteran said that the manifestos of 2004 and 2009 promised to remove all slums (jhuggi jhopri) and replace them with pucca homes. The party took votes on this promise, he pointed out, “but has this happened in any city? This is a fraud on the people”. Despite this, Congress feels it is not accountable and does not want to reply to people about its unkept promises”.
Now that the people have become alive to the issues, he said, senior Congress leaders have run away from contesting the elections. If one goes by the statements of its leaders, then the Congress represents the biggest threat to the nation. Saying that his words could prick, Narendra Modi said that for the Congress, Bharat is only a bhumi, but for the BJP it is matri-bhumi, motherland, and that is why the Gandhi family was in the realty business. Elaborating his vision for India, he said the country no longer wants leaders whose sole aim is to save their chairs. We need a strong government that will work to empower the youth and women, that will take care of their security. “I am not one of those who say girls must be home before sunset. It is the duty of the government to protect women”, he said.
Niticentral.com, 21 April 2014
http://www.niticentral.com/2014/04/21/dynasty-is-on-the-run-narendra-modi-214247.html