In a major scoop, rookie Unreal Times journalist India Speaks gained access to a senior strategist of the Congress Party. The senior strategist agreed to share the party's future plans on condition of anonymity.
Rookie Journalist: Good evening sir and thank you for granting this interview. How confident do you feel about the 2014 General Elections?
Senior Strategist: We are very confident and really hope that the NDA wins and Narendra Modi is made the PM. It will be a huge relief because right now we have absolutely no clue on how to address the nation's problems. Our economic policy is to appoint good-looking people in the critical positions. Our foreign policy is limited to ensuring the minister reads the right speech. Our Home Ministry has been reduced to finding more synonyms for condemn' and our Law Ministry is a glorified spell-checker. The rest of the people are either under investigation or will be under investigation soon. We Congressmen are not an arrogant bunch and know our limitations. We fervently hope that the NDA wins the elections, fixes the problems and prepare the ground for our return in 2019.
Rookie Journalist: But sir, isn't that an overconfident assumption that you will come back to power in 2019?
Senior Strategist: Of course not. Congress will always be voted back to power because deep in their heart, Indians know that we are a class apart. We may not know our economics and be really bad at making policies. However no one can match us in messaging. We ruled India for around 55 years out of 66 years of independence and yet we have successfully managed to blame other parties for all the problems in the country. We have presided over numerous riots but with outstanding success managed to make the whole riots narrative only about 2002. We effectively countered allegations of the billions in Swiss accounts of the Gandhis with the example of Bangaru Laxman accepting 1 lakh Rupees. When Robert Vadraji's land deals were exposed, we charge-sheeted the IAS officer who exposed it. And as a signature of our genius, we have named almost 90% of the country after 3 individuals. Name me one organization in the world which has managed to pull off such feats.
Rookie Journalist: I am unable to think of any. But do you think Rahul Gandhi's leadership is effective enough to ensure that you return to power in 2019?
Senior Strategist: You are making the same mistake which the whole country keeps making. Allow me to share a secret. The Congress party is less of a political party and more of an ongoing social experiment. Our elders were told in 1947 that you can never fool all of the people all of the time and they were curious to see how true that is. We started with appointing Nehruji as the PM over the more popular Sardar Patel. We were amused to notice that the country accepted it without a murmur. In the late sixties, in a rush of daredevilry, we allowed Indiaraji to isolate all the eminent party leaders and take over the leadership mantle herself. We were dumbstruck to see that the country accepted that too. Now things were getting really interesting. After her unfortunate death, we pulled off our bravest move and appointed an Air-India pilot as the PM just because he was born in the right family. And he won the biggest majority ever! This was proof that our experiment had barely scratched the surface of how self-destructive this country can be. I agree we slipped up a bit in the nineties with Narasimha Rao. He surprised us with his unexpected competence but we have managed to recover successfully as you can see. Portraying a mediocre bureaucrat as a humble economics wizard was a masterstroke even by our standards. It is unfortunate that the global scientific community has not adequately appreciated how we have continued to push the envelope with increasingly inept Prime Ministers. We have conclusively proven that it is possible to mentally condition a billion humans so that they suppress their own self-interest for decades. It is criminal that there isn't a Nobel Prize category to recognize such achievements.
Now that you know the broader context, I hope you will agree that Rahul Gandhi is the logical conclusion to this grand experiment. He is the big red cherry on this cake of ineptitude we have been baking for 66 years.
Rookie Journalist: That explains perhaps everything about India in the last six decades. But how are you sure Narendra Modi won't throw a spanner in this grand design? How are you planning to handle him?
Senior Strategist: We need to prioritize and hence we cannot focus our limited energy on people like Modi. However that does not mean we ignore the threat, however minor it may be. We have deployed our Team B,C,D & E to counter Modi with all their might.
Rookie Journalist: Who are these people?
Senior Strategist: Team B,C,D are the media, NGOs and the public intellectuals. Lack of journalists in the media, huge profit margins in the NGO industry and insecure leftist liberals are current realities of India and have helped blunt this so called Modi juggernaut.
Rookie Journalist: And Team E?
Senior Strategist: Team E is our last line of defense. It is the BJP party itself. They have seldom let us down with their long record of infighting and petty jealousies. And we are confident that Narendra Modi's loyal party colleagues will do everything in their power to ensure he is not able to implement long-lasting change.
Rookie Journalist: It seems that Congress has everything in control. Is there no threat which you are afraid of?
Senior Strategist: Of course there are threats which keep us awake at night. Current estimates indicate that after the year 2030 there won't be much left in the country to give away for free. We successfully managed to look into the eyes of a billion people whom we kept poor for six decades and proudly promised free food. And we successfully created the perception of transparency with RTI. Soon we shall gift them free water, land, electricity. We may even offer TVs, phones and vehicles in a decade but we sense that in the long run this model is unsustainable. This is a serious threat to the survival of the party.
Rookie Journalist: Don't you think such giveaways will destroy the economy?
Senior Strategist: You seem to be new to this business. Of course it will destroy the economy! But if the economy is not destroyed, how do we take credit for reviving it later?
Rookie Journalist: Thank you sir for a very illuminating interview. My best wishes for you and your party.