It is not clear whether it is short-sightedness or tacky politics that has led Prime Minister Narendra Modi to launch a full scale attack on Congress leader Sonia Gandhi. But the spectacle of the country’s PM choosing a moment of celebration — the completion of one year of his government — to unleash a political diatribe against the leader of the principal Opposition party is unusual.
Mr Modi’s vitriol was directed personally at the Congress leader — not at her party or ideology — although it is the Congress that the present PM has promised to drive to the ground through his repeated calls for a “Congress mukt Bharat”, or Congress-free India. And it was disseminated through what seemed a carefully controlled news agency interview distributed on Wednesday.
The newness of the project lies in the fact that no previous Prime Minister has attacked an Opposition party leader, leave alone the head of the main Opposition party. What beguiled Mr Modi into treading this path is mystifyingly unclear. But it is painfully clear that a government leader cannot hope to convey a message of achievements by poison-darting political opponents. Even as a fall-back option such a strategy seems faulty. Indeed, it would be interesting to know if the idea is the PM’s own or that of unseen advisers who aim to lead him up a slippery slope.
The point on which the PM chose to attack the Congress president is hardly a new one. It was done to death in the course of the Lok Sabha election campaign last year, especially after the publication during the campaign of a book by an embittered past official who was in the Manmohan Singh PMO in the UPA-1 years. The principal political charge contained in that was that Mrs Gandhi wielded real power when Dr Singh was PM, and that this was unconstitutional exercise of authority. This interpretation was exploited to the hilt by the BJP, and Mr Modi in particular, and can now be called only a spent cartridge. It is noteworthy that Mr Modi has fallen back on an interpretation of past events.
By seeking to cash in on this, the PM is trying to draw a distinction between the Congress chief and the former PM. On Wednesday, he also went hosted Dr Singh for a discussion on policy matters. When economic conditions haven’t improved in the past year, to ordinary folk this may appear to be a desperate attempt to draw on Dr Singh’s expertise as an economist. This can hardly be great advertisement for the government.
