From the desk of Arun Jaitley, 16 April 2014

The dangers of buying your own Propaganda:

It has been abundantly clear during the past several months that the Congress popularity amongst the electorate was nose diving. The more the adverse reaction of the electorate was visible, the shriller was the campaign of the Congress party. Hundreds of crores were spent from the government coffers for the Bharat Nirman advertisements. The conferment of statutory rights to people without backup financial support and administrative mechanism makes the right fictional. Yet the propaganda about the rights based approach was so large that Congress men were the only persons who were buying their propaganda.

Most Congress men believe that they were born to rule. Certainly the first family of the Congress firmly believes that. They rely on possessory rights on the “Idea of India” and the “Heart of India”. Losing claim over the “Vote of India” and consoling themselves by representing the “Heart” and “Idea” of India is only a self deception.

What after all is the “Idea of India”? It is a turn of phrase which represented the title of a book by a leading Indian political scientist. Can there be only one “Idea of India”? In an ideologically pluralistic society, every ideological combination, every social group, every economic thinker is entitled to have a vision which is his own “Idea of India”. Since the Congress party has claimed a copyright over the “Idea of India”, it needs to be reminded of what is not the “Idea of India”.

The Nehruvian vision on Jammu & Kashmir and the Himalayan blunder of 1962 were certainly not the “Ideas of India”. Losing territory to Pakistan and China during the Nehruvian regime is not my “Idea of India”. Dictatorship of Indira Gandhi during the Emergency was not my “Idea of India”, superseding the Judges in the name of a judiciary with social philosophy and censoring newspapers is not my “Idea of India. The 1984 massacre of Sikhs is not my “Idea of India”. Scandalous deals like Bofors, HDW submarine deal, bribing MPs in JMM case and the cash for vote scam, 2G spectrum scandal, coal block scandal are not my “Ideas of India”. 30% of Indians are living in poverty 67 years after independence can’t be an “Idea of India”. An India perpetually on the terrorists radar can hardly be anyone’s “Idea of India”.

Elections are about real issues not manufactured ones. The real issues are decided in the context of the current political situation. An ideological debate detached from the realities of governance is in the abstract. It will hardly help the Congress party any further.