00:00 Namaskar, welcome to another episode of editorial.
00:05 Now everyday I think I will talk to you about Pew Research but it gets pushed.
00:09 Yesterday it got pushed because of Adani story, today it is getting pushed because of India
00:14 Alliance story.
00:15 So I will do it tomorrow.
00:17 But let's talk about India Alliance.
00:20 Today India Alliance finished their two day long meeting and they had a press conference,
00:27 I was there in that press conference.
00:29 So let's talk about India Alliance and what happened in their meeting.
00:37 So like I said, today the two day meeting of India Alliance concluded.
00:46 It concluded with the press conference.
00:48 I was also there for the press conference.
00:51 So a lot of what I am going to tell you now is what I saw, I experienced, I felt and it
00:57 is my analysis, my opinion, taken up.
01:00 So I will tell you both.
01:02 I will tell you the good part of it and I will tell you the not so good part of it.
01:06 Both I will present to you today.
01:11 Let's talk about the good part, isn't it?
01:12 Let's talk about the good part first.
01:15 The good part is that one, is that those people sitting there in the screen that you see,
01:22 all of those leaders, you know, they are there together not because they love working with
01:28 each other, neither because they love each other, nor are they friendly to each other.
01:34 They were there together because of a clear need.
01:40 A need which each of them are very mindful of.
01:45 And that need is that if they have to survive, they have to survive after 2024, 2025, if
01:52 their parties have to survive, they have to stick together.
01:56 So the bond here, the bond here is not ideology, not affection, love, friendship, those are
02:04 not there.
02:05 The bond here is need.
02:06 You know what, need is a very strong bond.
02:10 So that's the point number one.
02:12 The point number two is that as on today, nobody is throwing their ambition on the ring.
02:23 Nobody is doing that.
02:25 Nobody is pitching for prime ministership or conveyor ship or whatever.
02:30 Nobody is putting pressure.
02:33 Everybody in that forum, in that room, it looked as if they first want this show to
02:39 get on the road.
02:40 That was the first thing that they wanted to do.
02:42 Why possibly it will happen?
02:45 Now the last thing about the good part of the story is that they have managed to make
02:52 committees.
02:53 So they have managed to make committees.
02:55 They made India Alliance, first a 13-member committee, that is with K.C.
02:59 Venugopal, Sharath Pawar, M.K.
03:01 Stalin, Sanjay Rao, Tejaswini Yadav, Abhishek Banerjee, Raghav Chadda, Javed Ali Khan, Lallan
03:08 Singh, Hemant Soren, D.Raja, Omar Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti.
03:12 They made a 13-member team, which is the core committee.
03:14 Then they made a coordination committee, which has K.C.
03:17 Venugopal, Sharath Pawar, T.R.
03:19 Balu, Hemant Soren, Sanjay Rao, Tejaswini Yadav, Abhishek Banerjee, Raghav Chadda, Javed Ali
03:25 Khan, Lallan Singh, D.Raja, Omar Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti and C.P.I.M.
03:29 I have still not given the name.
03:31 They said we will give you our name later on.
03:34 Then they have made a campaign committee, which is also a 19-member committee.
03:37 They have made a working group for social media committee, which is also a 12-member
03:42 committee.
03:43 They have made another working group for media, which is another 19-member committee headed
03:48 by Jairam Ramesh and Manoj Jha.
03:50 And then there is a working group of research, which they have made, which is also 11-member
03:55 committee.
03:56 So the point I am trying to make is they have made their committees and all that.
03:59 So these committees are now going to look into specific issues like media, like social
04:03 media, like coordination and so on and so forth, advertising and so on and so forth.
04:08 So this is very good, concrete, done, delivered, sealed.
04:13 Rather done, sealed and delivered.
04:15 My apologies.
04:16 The major problems are not solved.
04:22 Now let us come to the negative part of it.
04:24 See this two-day meeting did not take any major decision.
04:31 Because possibly they did not want to push each other.
04:34 They wanted this meeting to go well, especially under the current circumstances.
04:40 Which means, you see we were supposed to see the logo today.
04:42 That is what I was given to understand.
04:44 That, you know, especially from a lot of senior members of Congress, I was told that there
04:48 is a logo unveiling that is going to happen today and the advertising streak in me, I
04:53 was very excited to see what the logo is going to look like.
04:56 Nothing happened.
04:57 No logo, ogo and all happened.
04:58 That is a small thing.
05:01 See I was also under the impression that there will be a conveyor who will be kind of nominated
05:07 today.
05:08 No conveyor was elected, nominated, whatever.
05:11 No conveyor.
05:12 While Mallika Arjun Kharge was given a lot of respect and he was treated like a leader
05:18 of the group, but there was no conveyor.
05:20 So that is another question mark.
05:22 Third is a lot of things.
05:25 No seat adjustments.
05:26 There is no decision on the seat adjustments.
05:31 I am not saying therefore I was expecting that the entire seat adjustments and all are
05:36 going to be sorted and you know everything will be done and delivered.
05:40 I didn't expect that.
05:41 But still I expected some roadmap towards seat adjustments and how seat adjustments
05:47 are going to happen.
05:48 You know, even today both Mr. Aditya Thackeray, who actually came and expressed to the group
05:56 about what was the resolution passed, he also said that to the best of ability we will be
06:01 sharing seats.
06:02 To the best of ability.
06:03 To the best of ability we will be working together.
06:06 So these best of abilities, especially coming from a politician is dangerous, Baba.
06:10 So I was under the impression, I got the feeling, and even with talking to these politicians
06:16 individually, off camera, I got a feeling that they are not, nothing much has been kind
06:25 of finalized on this one.
06:26 So that was point number three.
06:28 Finalization, nothing has been done.
06:30 Means the sensitive issues, you know, these sensitive issues have not been touched.
06:35 They have touched all goody-goody issues.
06:37 That we will make this committee, we will make that committee, we will make this committee.
06:42 All those non-sensitive issues, easy problems have been sorted.
06:46 But the difficult problems are still not resolved.
06:49 They have not come to a conclusion on that.
06:51 So that's number one.
06:53 That's number two.
06:54 That's the second thing that I saw, I thought was kind of, I was expecting more and it didn't
07:01 happen.
07:02 So that's point number three.
07:05 Point number four is, I also found that, you know, I could not really make out, I could
07:18 not really make out as to what direction that this entire group was going.
07:24 In fact, Rahul Gandhi's speech, I should say, over all the other speeches, Rahul Gandhi's
07:29 speech was direct.
07:30 He spoke about Modi and Adani.
07:32 He spoke directly about Modi and Adani.
07:35 Mr. Lalu Prasad Yadav's speech was always as funny and as jovial as it could be.
07:40 It was a cute speech.
07:42 Everybody liked it.
07:43 In fact, he was the only person who got claps from the media.
07:45 So yeah, I mean, his speech was that.
07:47 But that clear understanding, because I'll tell you what, you see, from a marketing perspective,
07:53 the only good thing I saw in their entire proposition was that their proposition was
07:59 fantastic.
08:00 It is, "Judega Bharat, Jeetega India".
08:02 You know, those lines, that line was beautiful.
08:06 Whoever coined that line, it is a brilliant line, brilliant line, because they took care
08:12 of Bharat, which was something that BJP was trying to take, you know, hold of, and they
08:17 took care of India.
08:18 So India also they owned, Bharat also they owned.
08:22 "Judega Bharat, Jeetega India".
08:26 I thought, I was hoping to hear a lot of that from those leaders there.
08:32 Nobody spoke about it.
08:34 Nobody spoke about it.
08:35 That thing was playing in the background, but nobody spoke about it.
08:41 The speeches that were given were, yeah, I mean, it was all anti-Modi speech.
08:45 "Modi aisa kya, Modi aisa kya".
08:47 All that is fine.
08:48 But there was no clear direction that I thought, you know, I would see from India.
08:55 Because if it is India alliance, then there are so many parties, 27-30 parties together,
09:00 I thought that by now they would have at least thought of a clear communication strategy
09:07 to the press.
09:08 At least that I thought didn't happen.
09:10 So that was my point of view.
09:14 Couple of surprises were that, Vanchit Bahujan Agadi with Mr. Ambedkar, Mr. Prakash Ambedkar,
09:20 he did not join the gang.
09:23 What he told us, our correspondent that he was never invited.
09:27 So he didn't come.
09:28 So Vanchit Bahujan Agadi didn't join the today's meeting.
09:33 So I was surprised.
09:34 I thought he would be there because he has already announced his alliance with Shiva
09:37 Sena, but he was not there.
09:39 And Raju Shetty, Shetkari Sangatna did not join the alliance.
09:44 So those were the surprises.
09:45 But otherwise everything was as they planned it, everything was fine.
09:50 So this was broadly what the show was.
09:54 Now a few personal opinion, personal point of view.
09:59 You see people of Congress, people from Congress are watching this.
10:03 You know, some of the leaders had to leave because their plane was taking off at 4.30.
10:11 Okay, so some of the people had to leave.
10:15 Jairam Ramesh who is supposed to be the corporate communication head of Congress and also whatever
10:22 the campaign committee head, Jairam Ramesh comes up in the mic in front of the media
10:28 and says, you know what, some people have to go, some people left.
10:32 So don't ask why and all that.
10:34 So now he is telling the press as to don't ask why.
10:40 And I'll tell you why this is relevant.
10:42 Why this is relevant is because, you know, Nitish Kumar, Lalu Prasad Yadav, they came
10:47 up to the media and said, listen, you know, it's not just us, it is even you guys are
10:51 chained in this government is what they said.
10:54 You guys too are chained.
10:55 Even you guys will be free if we win, if India Alliance win.
11:02 He said, please write something good about us.
11:04 Please talk about us.
11:05 Please talk about our achievement.
11:06 This is what these two senior leaders said.
11:10 And you are expecting the media to do that and you have one person who is this Jairam
11:14 Ramesh who is supposed to be the campaign committee of Congress.
11:18 He is the who's who of Congress as far as campaign is concerned.
11:21 He decides who meets Rahul Gandhi, who doesn't meet who and all that.
11:24 He decides, I guess that's the thing.
11:27 This man comes and says that, you know, so and so leader is not going to be there.
11:30 So don't ask why and all that.
11:31 So that's it.
11:32 End of story.
11:33 He still thinks he is some minister or some royal thing in India and therefore, you know,
11:40 he can command and he can dictate.
11:42 I found that very, very strange.
11:44 That's point number one.
11:45 Point number two is, you know, this concept of not answering questions in India.
11:52 This concept is percolating.
11:54 This concept is spreading rather than percolating.
11:58 Wrong usage of words.
11:59 This concept is spreading.
12:01 Today, after all this, after so many leaders spoke, they just packed off and walked out.
12:09 And Sanjay Raut, who was the coordinator, he just came to the mic and said, we are not
12:14 going to answer any questions.
12:15 End of story.
12:16 Well, you call the press, you call the press and what, you expect them to just listen to
12:24 you, hear you out and walk out?
12:28 If you can't answer the press, why call the press?
12:31 You send them your feeds, live feeds, you send us all your feed and send a press note
12:39 of all this.
12:40 These are anyway press notes.
12:41 Send these press notes.
12:42 These are the committee, this is the committee, this is the people and all that and we will
12:46 just watch.
12:47 Why are you making us waste our time, energy, effort, camera person, that person, this person,
12:52 come all the way there and then watch you guys speak and then come all the way back?
12:57 So I thought, A, I thought this undemocratic pattern of no questions please is spreading
13:07 in this country.
13:09 It started off with our good Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi, who normally doesn't have
13:13 press conference and who doesn't take questions.
13:19 Now I see this spreading even in India Alliance.
13:23 I was deeply upset with that.
13:27 This is my sum up of the India Alliance meetings and tomorrow I promise you, let's talk pure
13:35 research.
13:36 Till I see you tomorrow, that's at 10 pm.
13:39 Namaskar.
13:40 [music]
Comments