The Congress party, even though it isn’t recognized as the official opposition in the country has been treating itself such. However, in their efforts to be in the opposition, they seem to believe that their duty is to criticize and backlash every move of the BJP, irrespective of the benefit construed on the people. Often, they come out as laughing stocks when they attempt to oppose bills such as the criminalization of triple talaq or initiatives such as the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana. However, there is one individual in the party cadre who has now come out to acknowledge PM Modi and his positive initiative for the citizens.
Congress leader, Jairam Ramesh, while launching a book, ‘Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India’ written by political analyst Kapil Satish Komireddi, stated that PM Modi’s governance model is not a “complete negative story” and not recognising his work and demonising him all the time is not going to help. It was time we recognised Mr. Modi’s work and what he did between 2014 and 2019 due to which he was voted back to power by over 30% of the electorate, he said.
He further continued, “He [Mr. Modi] talks in a language that connects him with the people. Unless we recognise that he is doing things which people recognise and which have not been done in the past, we are not going to able to confront this guy.”
“Let me tell you it is not a completely negative story when it comes to economics of the governance, the politics of the governance is completely different,” said the noted economist, adding “the social relations that have been created out of his governance model is also completely different”.
“In 2019, all of us in the political discourse made fun of one or two of his programmes, but it has turned out in all electoral studies that the PMUJ is one single programme which has been able to connect him with crores and crores of women and given him the political traction which he didn’t have in 2014,” said the Rajya Sabha member from Karnataka.
BJP led by PM Modi emerging victorious is the 2019 elections with a staggering mandate wasn’t anything unexpected as the result had been anticipated by all, except the opposition and more specifically the Congress party. Until the last moment, Congress was confident of its win and spared no occasion to remind the critics of the 2004 elections in which BJP had suffered a surprising defeat.
However, as the results came to prove, Congress as a whole was an extremely misguided bunch of people, oblivious to the real concerns of the people.
Jairam Ramesh said, “We talked about farmers distress throughout our entire campaign, people realise there was farmers’ distress but they did not hold Modi responsible for it. You saw what happened in the elections result thereafter. We have to understand what made him respectable.”
While the confession of a big Congress leader like Jairam Ramesh is proof that policies of PM Modi have made the life of common people easier, he also proved that Congress has been making a mockery of his public benefit policies for the sake of it. Jairam Ramesh’s is considered to be a kind of leader who puts his point in front of everyone.
Always having the nationalist point of view; back when he was the Union Minister for Rural Development during the UPA-II regime, he had taken a strong stand against the Naxalites. Not only this, Ramesh had also compared the Maoists to terrorists, when the Congress leaders could not even dream of saying so. In 2013, when some Naxalites attacked a convoy of Congress leaders and killed 26 people, he fearlessly hoisted the national flag in Jharkhand’s Naxalite-hit Digha village on the occasion of Republic Day.
Moreover, in 2010, Jairam Ramesh had publicly removed a ‘traditional convocation gown’ at the convocation ceremony of the Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM), saying it was a ‘barbaric colonial relic’. Addressing the students at the IIFM convocation at that time, Ramesh said that even after 60 years of independence, he does not understand why Indians are still bound by such ‘barbaric colonial remains’.
These illustrations clearly show that Jairam Ramesh is not like the other Congress leaders, who are unable to differentiate between truth and falsehood and seem to have tied a black belt of dirty politics over their eyes. Rather, he comes out as a senior Congress leader who is motivating the Congress workers to know the truth and effectively deal with it. The Congress has been reduced to mere 52 seats in the Lok Sabha and in such a situation, guidance of senior leaders is very important. However, all Ramesh can do is inform and eventually, it comes down to the Gandhis if they want the party to imbibe his preaching.