The Congress is facing anti-incumbency after ten years in power, Union Minister Jairam Ramesh admitted on Thursday, saying it poses a challenge as the party lost the battle of perception because the top leadership was “not communicative”.
He acknowledged that it is a “challenging” campaign in the elections ahead but maintained that the party would get a decent, dignified and respectable three-digit number. “Hyperactive judiciary, overactive constitutional functionaries like CAG, aggressive media and irresponsible civil society combined...
“Our reaction was also slow. We came across...We did not communicate our point of view effectively. Our top leadership was not communicative. Politics is all about communication. So we lost the battle of perception and we did not take them seriously enough,” Ramesh said in an interview to PTI.
He was responding to a question as to what in retrospect went wrong in the last two years of UPA government to create a perception of corruption-ridden and indecisive government, pushing the party back to the wall in the elections.
However, Ramesh insisted that there was “no need to be defensive or apologetic” about the performance of UPA-II and Congress will be getting a “decent, dignified, respectable, three-digit number” in the elections.
Holding that the BJP has a personality centred campaign, Ramesh said, “In media, personality-centred campaign makes more news. That is why the media goes after whatever Modi does, whatever he says.”
“A dog biting a man is no news. Man biting dog makes headlines. But you do not get votes by grabbing headlines,” he said, emphasising that the Congress campaign was a decentralised affair and was “very much on track”.