Jaitley’s FoMO

It is well-known that finance minister Arun Jaitley enjoys a special rapport with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. However, this bond between the two leaders did not stop Mr Modi from taking a dig at Mr Jaitley in public. At last week’s meeting of the BJP’s national executive, when Mr Modi was delivering his valedictory speech, Mr Jaitley was busy on his phone. This obviously did not go unnoticed by the Prime Minister. In his closing remarks, Mr Modi urged party leaders to use new tools of communication, especially social media, to disseminate information about the government’s policies and programmes to the people. Referring specially to the finance minister, Mr Modi recalled Mr Jaitley’s initial hesitation to use social media, but how he had now become its avid user. Mr Modi went on to add that he had noticed how Mr Jaitley was engrossed with his phone during his speech.

Ever since he was roped in to assist the Congress in crafting its poll strategy for next year’s Uttar Pradesh and Punjab Assembly elections, political strategist Prashant Kishor has got down to business. He is already in the process of fleshing out the election campaign after his preliminary discussions with leaders from the two states. Known for catchy and imaginative slogans, Mr Kishor is said to have already come up with a few for Punjab. Since the poll campaign will focus on the projection of Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh as the party’s chief ministerial candidate, one of the slogans which is under consideration is to pitch him as “Punjab da captain”. Mr Singh was in the Army and held the captain’s rank when he left service. He is often referred to as “Captain” by his friends and party colleagues in informal conversations. The purpose is to position him as the natural leader of the state. Mr Kishor was credited with scripting similar creative slogans when he handled Narendra Modi’s high-voltage 2014 Lok Sabha election campaign and Nitish Kumar’s poll strategy in last year’s Bihar Assembly elections. Mr Kishor’s one-liner “Ab ki baar Modi sarkar” proved to be an instant hit. Similarly, his slogan “Bihar mein bahar ho, Nitish Kumar ho” also captured the people’s imagination. Will “Punjab da captain” work the same magic for Capt. Singh Only time will tell.

When the ministry of finance invited the governor of Bangladesh’s Central Bank, Atiur Rahman, to attend the International Monetary Fund meeting on “Advancing Asia: Investing for the Future” between March 11-13, 2016, in Delhi, it was probably unaware that Mr Rahman was in deep trouble back home. Mr Rahman was in the eye of a storm after hackers siphoned off more than $80 million belonging to the Bangladesh Bank which was kept with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Not only did Mr Rahman sit on this information for over a month, he also ignored demands for his resignation when details of the cyber heist became public. To make matters worse, he decided to travel to New Delhi for the conference at the height of this controversy without informing Bangladesh finance minister A.M.A. Muhith. An unruffled Mr Rahman participated in several conference sessions and was spotted networking with other participants while a furious Bangladeshi finance minister waited impatiently for his return. However, the Delhi visit did not prove to be much of a reprieve as Mr Rahman was asked to put in his papers shortly after he landed in Dhaka.

The Congress Party’s visceral dislike for the Bharatiya Janata Party’s ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, is no secret. Its leaders, especially party vice-president Rahul Gandhi, do not lose any opportunity to hit out at the RSS and its divisive agenda. It was, therefore, a surprise when Congress leader and former minister environment and forests, Jairam Ramesh, actually had something positive to say about the RSS. While speaking on the subject of the Narendra Modi government’s policy to ignore environmental issues at a function last week, Mr Ramesh disclosed that unlike BJP leaders, the RSS was far more conscious about environment protection. The RSS, he said, was not in favour of Bt cotton and was also against big dams. The Congress leader revealed that several RSS members had even approached him to raise these issues with the government because their views were not being heard by their ministers. Mr Ramesh cited the example of minister of water resources, river development and Ganga rejuvenation Uma Bharati who was on the same page with him on the issue of construction of big dams when she was in the Opposition and he was a minister, but then promptly changed her stand after the BJP came to power.

The writer is a Delhi-based journalist