Milind Deora is only too aware of the anti-Congress mood in the country.
Will this impact the Mumbai South arena where the Minister of State for Communications, IT & Shipping, is eyeing a third successive win?
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Deora does not dwell too much on this anti-incumbency factor, except to say that even someone like “(Barack) Obama must be facing it too.” As he adds, “I don’t know honestly if it will be close or what will eventually happen.”
Deora takes on Bala Nandgaonkar from the MNS, Arvind Sawant of the Shiv Sena, and former banker Meera Sanyal representing the Aam Aadmi Party.
As he intermittently tweets on his Blackberry, the 37-year-old Minister strongly defends the Congress whose tenure has been “challenging and bumpy” especially in the last quarter. Yet, he believes the party must be judged on its ten-year performance.
Global economic woes “We had to weather a global storm which is just about coming under control now. Relative to what happened in other countries, India put up a good fight. And this was not due to any magic, but with the right policies with structures and systems in place,” Deora says.
For the South Mumbai battlefield, he believes his record is there for all to see.
“As Minister of Telecom and IT, I have set in place the first policy to regulate radiation in towers and handsets. I have also worked with the State Government to create India’s first housing regulator against the entire builder lobby,” Deora says. One of Deora’s priorities is to debunk the ‘myth’ in people’s mind that a Modi-led Government is good for the economy.
“Whether you are an industrialist, factory owner, trader, investor or a student seeking a job, economic growth goes hand-in-hand with political stability. And the prerequisite for (political) stability is social acceptability,” he says.
Vajpayee Govt This, according to Deora, is the fundamental difference between a Modi-led BJP and the one headed by Atal Behari Vajpayee which had a moderate face and handled a coalition comfortably.
With Modi, “they are projecting an extreme face who cannot take his party or allies along.”
From Deora’s point of view, this is not a sustainable model in terms of political stability.