Sam Pitroda back to campaigning for Congress in Gujarat, and he isn’t going unnoticed

November 16, 2017 | 08:23 IST

“If everything goes according to plan, he could become the prime minister when the Congress comes to power. If I know Rahul Gandhi, he may not like to accept an official assignment and this man will be Rahul’s Manmohan Singh,” says a Congress general secretary, on condition of anonymity naturally, about telecom entrepreneur Sam Pitroda, who is now campaigning for the party in Gujarat. The state goes to polls in December.

The statement by a party general secretary is certainly in the realm of speculation, but Pitroda’s evolution as a political voice is not going unnoticed. He has already been seen in kurta and trademark Gandhi cap, making statements laden with symbolism in an election environment. Sample this: “If you talk about democracy, you need collective leadership. You can’t have one guy making all the decisions. No matter if it’s God; even he is not qualified,” said Pitroda, in an all too apparent dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

This is Pitroda’s second innings in politics. A close advisor to former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, he is often credited for the telecom revolution in India. Born to Gujarati parents in Titlagarh in Odisha as Satyanarayan Gangaram Pitroda, 75, he has headed India’s National Knowledge Commission and served as advisor to former prime minister Manmohan Singh on public information infrastructure and innovation. Earlier this year, he quit from the post of information technology advisor to the Odisha government.

Unlike many, his association with the Nehru-Gandhi family has remained intact over the years. Rahul, though nearly three decades younger than Pitroda, calls him by his first name. Several young Congress leaders give Pitroda credit for Rahul Gandhi’s recent image makeover-the chairman of the party’s overseas department had reportedly “arranged” Rahul’s speeches at multiple venues in the US.

The party has launched Pitroda in Gujarat for two reasons-he is a Gujarati and has an iconic appeal among urban youth, an area where the BJP has traditionally performed better than the Congress. He did his schooling in Vallabh Vidyanagar in the state and went to engineering college in Vadodara. Pitroda is currently touring five cities-Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Jamnagar and Surat-to get a feel of what urban Gujaratis expect from the Congress. As part of the plan, small traders, workers and women are being consulted and their inputs are likely to make it to the poll manifesto. Pitroda has been put in charge of the team that will prepare a “people’s manifesto” that will focus on education, health, small and medium enterprises, employment generation and environment protection.
For good effect, Pitroda has also started invoking the name of the original Gandhi. He attacked the Gujarat government for closing down the school Mahatma Gandhi went to. The Gujarat government had initiated the process of shutting down the school (originally called Alfred High School) in September last year.

Not directly mentioning Modi’s Gujarat model, Pitroda takes him on the prime minister on his main poll plank-development. Not for him the “big projects-driven American model”; he prefers “the Gandhian focus on rural development, farmers, small projects”. The party has been consciously targeting youth under 35 and two internal surveys have mentioned the high cost of education as one of the peeves of students about the state government. On this too, Pitroda makes his pitch: “Privatisation of education in Gujarat is a major issue. Students have been made to pay hefty fees for education.”

The only false note so far: dissing the role of social media as a promotional tool. He should know how much of Rahul’s newfound celebrity is owed to his digital following. In another apparent reference to Modi, he said: “Some leaders have to depend on fancy tools such as Facebook and Twitter to communicate with people.” A self-goal?

Source: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/sam-pitroda-congress-gujarat-rahul-gandhi-manmohan-singh/1/1091029.html