Political Marketing: Part - 2

All the Gandhis and Vadras have come out. One after the other they hurl lies and get more theatrical as they feel the heat of losing power. On April 26, at various rallies, Sonia Gandhi was screaming and wailing “Desh ko bachao, Desh ko bachao”. And if that wasn’t effective she added “Hey Bhagwan; is model se desh ko bachao” (referring to the Gujarat model). When marketing fails, who you’re gonna call? God? Take a look at this ad:

What do you think? Would you buy the i20 because of the ad? What would you say about Hyundai if they put out an ad like this? Would you think highly of their marketing folks? In all probability Toyota would sue them. But given that politics is, naturally, full of immeasurable lies, court cases don’t happen that easily. But surely, you’re not going to think very highly of Hyundai’s marketing tactics if they advertised in this fashion. It doesn’t say much about itself but asks you to buy the i20 because the Toyota models are killers. Just replace Hyundai with Congress and Toyota with Gujarat model; the story is simple.

MTV (MusicTV) launched their channel in 1981 with a video that expressed their arrogant intent. That popular song by Buggles is titled “Video killed the radio star” which was the first ever aired by MTV. They believed video music will kill radio. Over the next 20 years video music was king. India even had Channel V. Even lousy music put forth with sassy videos became big hits. They just forgot one principle: Music is meant for the ears and not for the eyes. The Gandhis were good for the eyes but not for performance. People peddling trash as music with sexy videos survived for a while but it had to end. You cannot sell lousy music with good videos forever. You cannot sell bad governance and corruption with “rights”. MTV is not MusicTV now. It’s just an entertainment channel where the “M” doesn’t stand for Music anymore. Radio still survived and flourishes. To add to their woes there was the internet revolution, mobile and other devices which have made listening to music a different game. MTV at least learned to rejuvenate and reposition themselves. The Gandhis still think they are the “Mai Baap” of this country.

The most powerful software company in the world led by the world’s richest man missed the internet bus. Bill Gates’ vision of a computer on every desk drove him and his business to great heights. But Gates ignored the power of internet. Microsoft has never been able to catch up. Their Internet Explorer is scoffed at even today and had to be bundled with Windows to sell. That’s the consequence of failure to read the signs in time. The Congress, under Sonia Gandhi, was too arrogant to read the signs. They thought they will never be challenged this way; not by a Desi Chaiwallah. This arrogance is part of the Congress DNA. Jawaharlal Nehru did not estimate the Chinese would attack India. Nehru had inflicted the greatest disease India ever suffered from: Communism. You see, Nehru never trusted Indians possessing any skill, creativity or enterprise. He believed in the “Mai Baap” culture where govt did everything and the wretched citizens were lucky to get some share of the bread for which they should be grateful. So no matter how bad their performance, no matter how many the scams, no matter how much they disrespect people’s intelligence, the Gandhis and Mrs Vadra believe they have a divine right to power. In SoniaG’s opinion power is POISON not for her but for others.

Some folks will fondly remember they had limited choices for vehicles. You register for a Bajaj scooter you had to wait in queue for 3 years for delivery. You apply for a phone you had to wait 2-3 years. People distributed sweets in the neighbourhood when they got a phone. People had limited options in everything. Same was true for politics. For long the Nehru-Gandhi clan monopolised the politics of this country. They replaced the British and treated people the way the British did.

The “Gareeb” fellows in the villages and rural areas had never heard any other name other than Gandhi. That trickery of “Gandhi” was the biggest fraud on the Indians. That’s one of the Congress models; the “Nehru-Gandhi model”. IndiraG continued that model in different forms, including nationalisation of many banks and companies. At least till her and then RajivG there was some ideology, however faulty, that drove the Congress policies. And since IndiraG the classic Congress model has been “Gareeb”. Gareeb in different formats while the entire Gandhi clan institutionalised corruption. At least the positive thing I can say for IndiraG and RajivG is that they were Indians. The latest brand of Gandhis can hardly be called fully Indian.

RahulG failed, so SoniaG steps in with a 3 minute whining appeal on TV. She doesn’t seem to cut much ice so in steps Mrs Priyanka Vadra, wife of India’s biggest land-scammer Robert Vadra. He is the “national Damaad”. Vadra has built his empire of land banks, hospitality and air services business with a mere capital of 1 lakh in a matter of a couple of years. Let’s first look at the collective hypocrisy of this Gandhi-Vadra family. Incidentally, Mrs Vadra grandly told the media once that she wants to be called “Mrs Vadra” and not “Gandhi”. But I guess that was before she was required to campaign for her family and extend the “Gandhi” model because many innocent villagers still think these Chinese Gandhis are descendants of Mahatma Gandhi. Here are RahulG and Mrs Vadra who are different persons in different situations. RahulG does photo-ops with villagers and labourers. He eats at Dalit houses for lipstick while his real life is totally different:

Half the time RahulG runs abroad and nobody knows where he goes. When he heard of the Uttarakhand tragedy he ran off to Spain. Narendra Modi rightly points out that come elections, the Gandhis start chanting “Gareeb, gareeb, gareeb, gareeb…” The Gareeb have long held the Gandhis as gods. Sonia Gandhi and her dumb son and daughter have taken this stupid model to a new level. In addition, they have another member, Robert Vadra, who the BJP calls “Ghotale ka badshah” (King of scams). And this king of scams is also exempted from security checks at airports and other places. How can we trust such a person not to smuggle stuff? Here’s another model of hypocrisy; a “Barsati Mendak” model:

Mrs Vadra now campaigns in Rae Bareli and Amethi, considered the exclusive real estate of her family. She whines and claims the BJP and Narendra Modi are abusing her, her family, her husband and they are victims of such abuse. Oh! Pardon them; they DARED to raise questions about the corruption in the Gandhi-Vadra model. Does anyone really think Rahul or Mrs Vadra give a damn about the poor? Who are they fooling? Considering Amethi is their real estate for many years here’s what is circulating on the net on the grand improvements in 50 years in the town:

Someone joked the Amethi toilet model has sunlight throughout the day. Another one sarcastically said they should have at least put a door to these monuments. I think the Gandhi-Vadra folks have taken the term “shitting bricks” a little too seriously. This is their model; crumbs for the unwashed masses. That is not all. If Pappu runs to Dalit homes and eats with them, Mrs Vadra is not very far behind. She wants to show how she is one with the poor villagers and sits down on wild shrubs and eats food in China plates with them. I wonder if their idiotic advisers ever tell them that even farm workers mostly sit under a shade on clean ground to eat food. But hey, this is theatre so a rough spot makes for more drama as kids watch.

Mrs Vadra calls Amethi her “holy land”. This holy land which has been nurtured under the Gandhi-Vadra model doesn’t have proper roads or toilets. On the day RahulG went to file his nomination (April 12) the SP govt allowed 24 hour power in Amethi for the Gandhi-Vadra event. Imagine, even C5M Sagarika Ghose now asks if the “Gandhi brand is in decline”.

That she is a Congress member and campaigns is fine but in all her life Mrs Vadra is not known to have done a single thing for Amethi or India. She just finds some sarees during elections to campaign like an “Indian”. She struts around like a queen in her little Queendom and our slaves in the media at TimesNow, CNN-IBN and NDTV fawn and kiss the ground she walks on. They don’t dare to ask her questions. The video that the BJP produced (“Damaad Shri – Ghotale Ka Badshah”) on Vadra’s scams should have damn well been produced by a news channel and not a political party. But they don’t dare. And filthy cowards like Arnab Goswami talk about “courageous journalism”. How much courage does pimping take for Arnab, Vinod Mehta or Aarti Jerath? Even a regular Modi-hater like Nikhil Wagle cannot help admitting that the fake victimhood and whining by Mrs Vadra won’t sell anymore.

As for the senior queen, Sonia Gandhi, she has played the backseat PM for 10 years and supervised the most monumental scams this country has ever seen. The media doesn’t dare ask one single question to or about her. They keep throwing lies and muck at Modi. Remember, the one person most responsible for injecting poisonous muck in election campaigns is none other than SoniaG when she used the phrase “Maut ka Saudagar”. She again backed it up with “Zeher ki kheti”. Such a spiteful, hate-filled woman cannot be in charge of power. After that, any adjective hurled at the Gandhi-Vadra clan for all the scams and corruption cannot be complained about. For long, the Gandhis have believed they had the sole right to rule India. From Nehru to Sonia Gandhi to RahulG to Mrs Vadra. They seem to believe it is their divine right. Even within the Congress party the most performing PM in recent history has to be PV Narasimha Rao who has been consigned to the Congress dustbin in terms of honour. PVNR pursued a model of “Reforms” in his PMship. What model does SoniaG or Congress now have that they can market? Actually, NOTHING! The model they created and delivered is a “Crash, boom, bang” model of India:

The Gandhis tell you that their “Crash, boom, bang” model which is the shape they have reduced India to is a better model than any other. They keep trashing the “Gujarat model” as evil. They do it with a generous dose of LIES which the media parrots then sing over and over again. Even when Modi has stated clearly that the Gujarat model cannot be fully adapted to the whole country, the Gandhis lie about he making such a claim. It’s the first time in Indian history that governance and development have received priority in elections. Modi’s simple model is “Sabka saath, Sabka vikas”. And the truth is that the Gujarat model is being applauded by most people who recognise it. In absence of any performance that they can market to voters, the Gandhi-Vadra clan peddles endless LIES and now play VICTIMS. They cite fake land issues in Gujarat when the biggest land-scammer of India, Robert Vadra, is within the family. There is no Congress model. The only model they have is the RSVP model, as Modi calls it (a sarcastic use of the French “Respondez Sil Vous Plait” meaning reply, if you please). “Rahul-Sonia-Vadra-Priyanka”! You have your chance to RSVP at the ballot box. Say “No, Thank you”!   

PS: The Hyundai-Toyota example is used only to demonstrate a point and is not to be construed as a comment on the products of these companies.