What Modi wears is none of your business, Rahul

Rahul Gandhi is naturally gifted to score own goals. The unchallenged prince in Congress said a few things about Prime Minister Narendra Modi which reveal nothing but his own hollowness and fallacies.

Rahul says Modi is only interested in visiting foreign countries and wearing new dresses. While he has a point that Modi is making too many foreign visits, it is still not time to assess their merits or results. Things will not happen overnight. So we must give him the benefit of the doubt for the moment.

Rahul was the Congress general secretary in 2008 when the Delhi blasts happened. At a time when the nation wanted actions, the then home minister Shivraj Patil was seen changing as many as three different shirts in a span of two hours. Not even a newborn gets three diaper changes in two hours! Back then, the media compared Patil with Nero who played fiddle when Rome burnt. Rahul, silent then, has now counted that Modi was seen in as many as 16 shirts in four days in the US. Own goal!

People have been wondering where Rahul was during Modi's US trip. Some rumours suggested he was holidaying and some suggested he was attending some course or conference. But now we know, Rahul was busy counting the number of shirts his prime minister had changed during his foreign visit. Own goal!

Rahul further says he has not seen Modi with a farmer or an unemployed youth. It is true that the problems faced by the farmers must be looked into with great importance, but at the same time, why should Rahul expect to see Modi with the unemployed? What is Rahul's priority? The existence of unemployed youth is the fundamental problem. Seeing or not seeing a prime minister with the unemployed is not the yardstick of development. Logically, one cannot expect Modi to create jobs for all Indians in one year. The fact of the matter is that Rahul's own party, the Congress has been responsible for the unemployed that we see today. He should count the number of years his party governed India. Own goal!

I am apolitical - neither a Gandhi bhakt nor a Modi bhakt. I have been critical of Modi's lack of vision in his policies and political stunts. But what Rahul does now is for cheap publicity. That exactly is his problem. Focusing on Modi's lack of attention on more serious matters back home than his foreign visits or clothing interests would have given Rahul the mileage he wanted. He should know what he wants to speak and how.

Rahul should have criticised Modi for not speaking up on the religious tension that exists in several parts of the country. He should have bashed him for not controlling his followers. He should have challenged him to make a statement about the beef ban and related deaths. He should have severely criticised Modi for not paying attention to the needs of the farmers who are stricken with poverty. He should have listed the problems in Digital India and suggested ways to improve them. He should have expounded his views on the pragmatic ways to create more jobs.

Wearing good clothes doesn't make one good or bad. It is one's personal choice. Rahul's father Rajiv Gandhi used to wear impressive clothes. That never made him good or bad. But what Shivraj Patil did was something condemnable because he should have focused on things that needed immediate attention.

Let me sum it up this way: the prime minister wears new clothes because he knows there are Congress vice-presidents who are astonished to see them, passionately count them, and do nothing else. Does the prince know that even before the Modi kurta became a style statement, there was another dress known as the Nehru jacket that was made popular by Rahul's great grandfather, who was also concerned about his public appearances?