Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh
The Congress party is facing anti-incumbency after 10 years in power, Union Minister Jairam Ramesh admitted today, saying it poses a challenge as the party lost the battle of perception as the top leadership was "not communicative".
He acknowledged that it is a "challenging" campaign for the party in the elections ahead but maintained that the party would get a decent, dignified and respectable three-digit number.
"Hyperactive judiciary, overactive constitutional functionaries like the CAG, aggressive media and irresponsible civil society combined," were the factors that worked against the UPA government, he said.
"Our reaction was also slow. We did not communicate our point of view effectively. Our top leadership was not communicative. Politics is all about communication. So we lost the battle of perception and we did not take them seriously enough," said Mr Ramesh.
He was responding to a question as to what went wrong, in retrospective, in the last two years of the UPA government.
However, Mr Ramesh insisted that there was "no need to be defensive or apologetic" about the performance of UPA-II and the Congress will get a "decent, dignified, respectable,
three-digit number" in the elections.
Holding that the BJP has a 'personality-centred' campaign, Ramesh said, "In media, personality-centred campaign makes more news. That is why the media goes after whatever Modi does, whatever he says."
"A dog biting a man is no news. Man biting dog makes headlines. But you do not get votes by grabbing headlines," he said, emphasising that the Congress campaign was a decentralised affair and was "very much on track".
Dubbing "opinion poll projections as Narendra Modi's 'sunhare sapan' (golden dreams)", he said the Congress is unfazed by opinion polls which have always 'overrated' the performance of the BJP, be it in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls or in the 2009 elections.
He said Yogendra Yadav (currently a leader of the Aam Aadmi Party), who has been a "very thorough and a very serious" psephologist, once said that opinion polls have not been correct and have always overestimated the BJP.
Comparing the Congress to a 'tortoise' in the Aesop fable, he said the party was fighting the polls to "win and not to sit in the opposition".
"Congress is like the tortoise in the tale of hare and tortoise. Ultimately the tortoise wins," he said.
Mr Ramesh also described Rahul Gandhi as a "marathon man, a long distance runner, who has a gameplan for the party".
Asked whether there was a 'Modi wave' in the polls, he replied in the negative, but said there is 'lot of buzz' about the Gujarat chief minister.
"There is a lot of buzz of Modi. A lot of it is self-generated by the BJP. There is buzz of Modi on social media and among the RSS cadres," he said.
At the same time, he refused to attach much importance to the buzz.
"So what if there is a buzz. Modi is one point agenda of the BJP. It is not saying 'vote BJP', but 'Vote Modi'. This buzz is bound to happen as Modi is a 'dramabaz' (someone who indulges in theatrics) and it is clear from the way he speaks and the language he uses."
Mr Ramesh, however, acknowledged that after ten years in power, the Congress was facing anti-incumbency.
"There is no doubt about that," he said.
Criticising the BJP, the Union minister suggested that the weakness of the party is reflected in the way it was going about forging alliances in different states.
"The fact of the matter is that there is a sign of desperation in the manner in which the BJP is going about forming alliances as its footprint is limited," he said.
The BJP has alliances in several states including Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Punjab, Assam and Andhra Pradesh.
Asked about the central government's performance, Mr Ramesh said there was no need to be defensive about the government's performance as the UPA had delivered 8 per cent rate of growth and UPA-II 7.3 per cent, as against 6 per cent growth during the BJP-led NDA's rule.
"We do not have to feel defensive or apologetic about our performance. There is a new paper on the Indian economy during the UPA and the NDA tenures which has demolished the myth that the UPA has not performed," he said.
Detailing some of the achievements, he said, "We lifted 14 crore people above BPL. When we came to power the number of mobile phones in India was 3.5 crore, now it is almost 90
crore. We have the lowest call rates in the world".
Asked how the party campaign was going, Mr Ramesh said, "The Congress campaign is very much on track. It is a decentralised campaign. This time you see the Congress campaigning at the candidate level, DCC level, PCC level and AICC level. Traditionally, we have focused at the AICC level. This time, there has been greater emphasis on each of the four levels".
"We have released our manifesto on March 26 while the BJP is yet to release its manifesto or its vision document. Our candidate selection process has been far smoother than the candidate selection process of the BJP," he maintained.