While Modi is facing a storm in centre with everything from GST hiccups, unemployment data, Onion prices to Cracker Ban going against it there is a genuine need for an opposition figure.
The grand old party, which was looking like a dwarf against tall figures in BJP, seems to have gathered momentum just at the right time. The new pace in Congress Party has come from rising wave of dissatisfaction among people against Narendra Modi’s government failure to fulfill its promises.
Now, people are questioning government’s demonatisation decision — which pulled down the country’s economic growth and made many of them unemployed. The poor and middle class who hailed the decision are now feeling cheated by the move as it affected only them contrary to the government’s claim of tightening a noose against rich and strong.
It seems that Congress Party has touched the right cord this time as it’s Vice President Rahul Gandhi has been asking all the right questions, which were missing from the opposition diary until recently.
He is asking about employment scenario in the country, declining GDP, farmers’ suicide and raising doubts over government’s demonetisation plank. More importantly, he claimed to have solution for the biggest problem– unemployment.
Modi government had promised the country one crore job a year.
Gandhi, who has been given names like Shahzade by the ruling party to ridicule him, might give a fight to the BJP in the 2019 General Election. It seems that people are ready to listen him as he is trying to connect with them with small gatherings rather than organising a meeting on a large scale. Even, he has worked on his speeches, now it’s more interactive, which once used to be very flat.
People also praised Gandhi’s speech in the University of California at Berkeley, where at one time he admitted that Modi was a better orator than him, but he also said that the prime minister does not keep a two-way communication with his party members and colleagues. Further, the Congress leader took a pot-shots at Government’s over current slowdown in the economy and low job creation. He also aired his views on Modi’s Make in India initiative. He said that he would have focused on small and medium enterprises under the ‘Make in India’ initiative, rather than giving emphasis on defence and large companies, which is being focused by the BJP’s government.
Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP), who claims that people don’t hear Rahul Gandhi, is itself giving reaction to each and every word uttered by the Congress leader. The saffron party has been fielding its top brass to verbally attack Gandhi, heir of the powerful Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.
Main challenge?
The biggest task against Gandhi is to resolve the party’s large scale internal differences and cash-in on rising dissatisfaction among people during upcoming assembly elections in Gujrat and Madhya Pradesh.
Gandhi has surely make it clear that opposition party is back with a new zeal.
