Increase in jobs would be yardstick for govt performance: Sanjaya Baru

HYDERABAD: The NDA government can claim to have delivered the goods if its initiatives to promote infrastructure and industrialisation lead to massive job creation, media advisor to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Sanjaya Baru said here today.

"At the end of the day, if he (Prime Minister Narendra Modi) gets more jobs, more investments, more new projects, with all these various Bombay-Delhi industrial corridor, railway lines, highways, urban development, Swachh Bharat, all these things if they actually work and there are more jobs, year after year, month after month, that's the best," he said.

He was speaking at an interactive session on 'Modi and Media' organised by the Hyderabad Press Club and Hyd Park.

Asked if the Modi government had decided to "live without the media", he said it was now coming around to the view that it needed a media strategy.

"It is true that you do not need the media to win an election...But, once you have come to power, for sustaining your popularity, you need the media," Baru, who was Singh's media advisor from 2004 to 2008, said.