Vajpayee’s loss in 2004 should be a warning to Modi. Global acclaim won’t win elections
27 June, 2023
It is precisely good macro numbers and foreign praise that I submit is a cause for worry. They were not vote-winners in 2004. They may not be now.
When you get to age seventy-one; when you have been regularly paying income tax for fifty years; when you remember Darjeeling before its great hotel burnt down; when you remember Highland Park in Gulmarg as a quiet place; when you remember seeing Jawaharlal Nehru, who we knew as Panditji speaking in plaintive English; when you remember Soviet leaders Bulganin and Khrushchev driving down Marine Drive; when you remember that Guntakal was a meter gauge station; when you remember the young Vajpayee’s eloquence even in the years when he knew that he was going to lose; when you remember Indira contrasting “Garibi Hatao” with “Indira Hatao”; when you remember where you were when John Kennedy was shot; when you remember all these things, you are old and wise (perhaps unwise?). In our country, at least, the old are entitled to “give gyan”.