Who's afraid of Rahul Gandhi?

Delhi, May 9: Nothing shows the weakness of the Narendra Modi government more than the fact that it gives the impression of having been spooked by Rahul Gandhi to strive for a pro-poor image. Hence, the directive to ministers to go around the country after the budget session to counter the perception that the government is anti-farmer. In line with the Congress' time-honoured practice of launching various schemes to help the poor, the BJP, too, is initiating several social security measures. But the fact that it is fumbling in the dark is evident from the decision to invoke the saffron ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyaya's "integral humanism" concept to burnish the government's and the BJP's image although the phrase is as meaningless to people outside the Hindutva camp as Atal Bihari Vajpayee's espousal of "Gandhian socialism" when the BJP was formed in 1980. The point, however, is why should the government be running scared simply because Rahul Gandhi, with his batteries recharged in a Myanmar Buddhist monastery, has succeeded in infusing an element of belligerence into the Congress? The government's nervousness is all the more unwarranted because nearly all of Rahul's allegations, based on unverifiable calumny and half-baked ideas of the social scene, can be easily refuted. A simple rebuttal of his anti-industrial stance is that development itself is a pro-poor measure as it leads to employment-oriented growth which is brought about largely by the private sector. The government, therefore, has nothing to be apologetic about. If it still gives the impression of being on the back foot, the reason apparently is that either the government does not have clear-cut ideas of what it intends to accomplish, or that there are not enough accomplished spokespersons in its ranks who can articulate its views with vigour. It will be a major mistake on the prime minister's part, therefore, to change his line on being influenced by Rahul Gandhi's anti-corporate sector tirades, which will spell doom for the economic reforms and take India back to the 2-3 percent Hindu rate of growth of the licence-permit-control raj.