Manifesto for Change
What’s keeping Varun Gandhi busy these days? He has recently penned an 827-page long book, sharing his vision for a rural and economic blueprint. The Rural Manifesto has anecdotes, case studies and data to back his ideas. It is this book that he takes to students across India during his interactions at various universities, IIMs and IITs across the country. During the last two years, Varun has visited 208 academic institutions, reaching out to students, discussing economics not politics. In fact, the soft spoken, earnest youth interacting with the students is a far cry from the strident campaigner that once made headlines for all the wrong reasons. (Incidentally, the recording of the “hate speech” that Varun was supposed to have delivered, was later found to have been doctored with as many as 63 cuts.) But perceptions linger, and Varun is doing all he can to eradicate that image. And to hear him earnestly discuss irrigation problems, farmers’ suicides, and employment generation, one would say he is succeeding. Sample one such speech he gave in Hyderabad recently, “It takes 24 lakh to create one job in the steel sector and one lakh to create 24 jobs in the steel sector. We have to act smart to use this information.” That’s smarter political rhetoric for sure.
Pulling a CM-ship out of the hat
There are those who claim former Rajasthan Chief Minister and Congress general secretary, Ashok Gehlot, is the new Ahmed Patel in the Rahul Gandhi dispensation. Yet, those who know Gehlot claim that his first love is still the state of Rajasthan and if some of the exit polls are right and the Congress is in a position to form the government, he would do all he can to get his old job back. Soon after the exit polls came in, Gehlot told the media, “The credit for Congress revival and the party’s good performance will go to Rahul Gandhi (note: no mention of Sachin Pilot who has been camping in the state since 2013) and it is the party’s High Command who will decide who becomes CM should the Congress win.” And with that, he has tossed his hat firmly in the centre of the ring!
Legal Way Out
Union Minister Vijay Goel held his annual lunch on Friday where he served delicious chaat and kulfi from Chandni Chowk. All this with large cut-outs of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah towering in one corner of the lawns. Since this was on the last day of the Assembly elections, a number of BJP ministers were spotted at the lunch—from Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, Piyush Goel, Jitender Singh to other leaders like Meenakshi Lekhi and Sudanshu Trivedi. The buzz was about the polls and the expected results, especially with the exit polls slated for later that day. The talk veered around the finality with which some TV anchors took the exit polls as actual results and expected politicians to admit defeat on the basis of these polls and not wait for the actual results. Then Jaitley came out with a solution, “Maybe we should say, yes we accept we have lost the exit polls.” Trust him to find the legally right and politically correct riposte!