2019 Lok Sabha polls are around the corner and it is almost a do or die situation for the Congress. In such circumstances, it is not unfair to expect the grand old party to go into election mode. The Congress president who had entertained the entire nation during his 2014 Lok Sabha polls campaign has come up with what can be described as the first hilarious campaign initiative in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
He tweeted a video in which he claims to have made an attempt to understand the concerns of small businesses from around India. The Congress president said, “I recently met a group of Small Business owners from around India, to get a sense of the problems they face in running their businesses and how we can shape our policies to help them grow and create millions of new jobs. Watch & Share this video of my interaction with them.”
I recently met a group of Small Business owners from around India, to get a sense of the problems they face in running their businesses and how we can shape our policies to help them grow and create millions of new jobs.
Watch & Share this video of my interaction with them. pic.twitter.com/asDGyn6fzc
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) March 3, 2019
If one goes through the video, it is surprising that in order to get a sense of the concerns of “small businesses around India”, the Congress president decided to meet a small group of supposedly 6-7 small businessmen. Only Rahul Gandhi, with his impressive acumen, can understand the concerns of lakhs of small businesses across the country by interacting with such a small group. In a diverse country with peculiar conditions in almost every other part of the country, Rahul Gandhi is so intelligent that he can understand a wide range of problems faced by small businessmen engaged in diverse sectors of the economy across the length and breadth of the nation by meeting a handful of businessmen.
Apart from being a naive attempt at addressing the concerns of small businesses across India, the campaign video is heavily doctored too. It is shoddily edited and it seems that this is more like a publicity stunt than an interaction. Every time the camera pans on the table, the plates in which meals for the group are being served, either magically appear or disappear. This clearly shows that there must have been several retakes and the entire thing is a staged drama to garner votes and rebrand Rahul Gandhi as a dynamic leader. Initially, the plates can be seen on the table over which the staged interaction is taking place. A little later, meals can be seen being served. However, at 00:30 the plates magically disappear, only to appear again a little later. What is surprising is the fact that the plates appear once again at 00:50.
If the Congress had to stage a superficial interaction in order to rebrand Rahul Gandhi, at least, it could have been done a little more professionally to make it believable. At one point in the video, one of the businessmen can be heard asking if the states where Congress government is in power could consider hand-woven khadi uniforms for school-going students in order to boost small businesses. Rahul Gandhi decides to call up the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister. At 2:18, Rahul Gandhi decides to ring Kamal Nath and within a fraction of a second, Rahul Gandhi is not only able to call him up but also make Kamal Nath pick up his phone. Either Rahul Gandhi’s telecom operator boasts of superior, next-generation technology in terms of extraordinary network connectivity and Kamal Nath, being a family loyalist that he is, keeps waiting for his call or the video is edited. One would argue that the latter is more probable.
This video is a gem and it seems that we up for some of the most hilarious anecdotes by Rahul Gandhi even as the Lok Sabha campaign intensifies.
