Congress lost perception battle, leadership not communicative: Jairam Ramesh

NEW DELHI: Congress is facing anti- incumbency after 10 years in power, Union Minister Jairam Ramesh admitted today, saying it poses a challenge as the party lost the battle of perception as the top leadership was "not communicative".

He acknowledged that it is a "challenging" campaign in the elections ahead but maintained that the party would get a decent, dignified and respectable three-digit number.

"Hyperactive judiciary, overactive constitutional functionaries like CAG, aggressive media and irresponsible civil society combined...

"Our reaction was also slow. We came across...we did not communicate our point of view effectively. Our top leadership was not communicative. Politics is all about communication. So we lost the battle of perception and we did not take them seriously enough," Ramesh said in an interview.

He was responding to a question as to what in retrospect went wrong in the last two years of UPA government to create a perception of corruption-ridden and indecisive government, pushing the party back to the wall in the elections.

However, Ramesh insisted that there was "no need to be defensive or apologetic" about the performance of UPA-II and Congress will be getting a "decent, dignified, respectable, three-digit number" in the elections.
Holding that the BJP has a personality centred campaign, Ramesh said, "In media, personality-centred campaign makes more news. That is why the media goes after whatever Modi does, whatever he says."

"A dog biting a man is no news. Man biting dog makes headlines. But you do not get votes by grabbing headlines," he said, emphasising that the Congress campaign was a decentralised affair and was "very much on track".

Dubbing "the opinion poll projections as Narendra Modi's sunhare sapane (golden dreams)", he said Congress is unfazed by the opinion polls which have always "overrated" the performance of the BJP, may it be in 2004 or in 2009.

He said Yogendra Yadav, who has been a "very thorough and a very serious" psephologist, once said that opinion polls have not been correct and have always overestimate the BJP.

Likening Congress to a "tortoise" in the Aesop fable, he said the party was fighting the polls to win and not to sit in the opposition.

"Congress is like the tortoise in the tale of hare and tortoise. Ultimately the tortoise wins", he said describing Rahul Gandhi as a "marathon man, a long distance runner...who has a gameplan for the party".

Asked whether there was a Modi wave in the polls, he replied in the negative, but said there is "lot of buzz" about the Gujarat Chief Minister.

"There is a lot of buzz of Modi. Lot of it is self-generated by the BJP. There is buzz of Modi on social media and among the RSS cadres," he said .

At the same time, he refused to attach much importance to the buzz.

"So what if there is a buzz. Modi is one point agenda of the BJP. It is not saying 'vote BJP', but 'Vote Modi'. This buzz is bound to happen as Modi is 'dramabaz' (indulging in theatrics) and it is clear from the way he speaks and the language he uses."