When Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Connect India’ didn’t work

Bengaluru

: An embarrassing moment, especially a self-inflicted one, in front of a small audience is bad enough, but in YouTube age, embarrassment is neither temporary nor does it stay in the small room. It goes viral and in an endless loop. Eternal, repeated, global damnation.

That’s what happened to Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday as his Wednesday rendezvous with the girls of Mount Carmel College went viral on YouTube and the social media.

On Wednesday, Mr Gandhi pooh-poohed PM Modi’s Swachh Bharat and Make in India programmes, but when the college girls loudly voiced their contrary opinion, he was left standing confused and fumbling.

Not only did Mr Gandhi not seem to recognise the weight of the history of his own party’s failures on these fronts – which Mr Modi is sympathetically seen to be cleaning up – he was also talking without data in hand. It’s exactly the opposite of how and why Mr. Modi impresses his audiences. Data at his fingertips, even if it’s out by an order of magnitude sometimes.

Not surprisingly, it ended badly as Mr Gandhi sheepishly told his audience, “You think they are working Well, I think they are not working.” As Rahulji said, Connect India (and he meant, Digital India) is not working. Unfortunately, everybody agrees. His connect with India is not working. But as Rahul Gandhi said, anyway