Political gimmicks?

The recent desperation shown by UPA to score a point in the paltry list of achievements that the outgoing Government has managed to come up with is amusing.

A day after ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ swept the Oscars, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said, “We salute the true heroes of achieving India who are at their best in ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. It’s a film of India, for India and by India.” He went on to say,"We are proud that in the conducive environment of good governance provided by the UPA government India has become achieving India.” The attempt was good but it may not be good enough. By attaching itself to the Slumdog glory, Congress seems to make an impact on the educated class but do they really think that the voters are so very dumb? Narendra Modi gave a new dimension to this issue. Taking clue from an SMS trail, he carried the issue to the masses when he remarked, "Without Congress there would not be slums and without slums there would not be any Slumdog Millionaire and no Oscars." That hit bull's eye! Congress would be afraid to raise this issue ever again.

In a second and a very recent instance, Ambika Soni claimed that the government utilised Vijay Mallya’s services to procure the Gandhi memorabilia. Interestingly, hours later Mr. Mallya denied any Government involvement giving a severe blow to Congress’ attempts to project itself as a nationalist party. What was the congress thinking really? Firstly, they could not shell out a few millions from their multi-billion election budget and now they are taking to these frenetic measures in a pre-poll frenzy.

A recent estimate by TOI showed that UPA are still the favourites in this election. Then what is the reason for such political gimmicks? Maybe, UPA realised (even though too lately) that they have failed to make any significant progress during their reign, that their own popular vote-winning tactics would backfire and that the Government negligence to the financial turmoil would consume UPA in its own right. Only time can tell what lies in store for the UPA. And, its upto us, the voters, to decide if a party who gives a thumbs down to all development agendas deserves to remain in power.

Let's get political

India’s general elections are scheduled during the months of April and May. In a period that is so politically intensive, it makes sense to talk and discuss politics. Unfortunately, the voter turnout in India is miserably low and more so of the informed class. I, therefore, would be writing about my thoughts and opinions on political events with a hope that it will draw the attention of the educated class to these very important elections.