Congress gain is nation's loss
Sonia Gandhi ensured that the PM pushed the bailout through Cabinet to avoid trouble for her own and son Rahul’s election from UP in 2014.
My last visit to New Delhi coincided with the elections in Gujarat. While trying to catch up with television in my hotel room, I noticed a campaign commercial. It opened with a song whose opening line translates as, “The nation seeks account of the misery inflicted over the last 10 years.”
Although the reference to 10 instead of eight years should have served as a clue, my immediate reaction was to wonder why the Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi was running his election campaign against the Congress in Delhi. As the commercial progressed, I realised my mistake: It was being run on behalf of the Congress with Modi as the target. But that begged the question why the Congress was challenging Modi in Delhi even before he had emerged as the leader of his party? And wasn’t this a case of the pot calling the kettle black since one could equally take the Congress to account for the misery it had inflicted on the nation?