Jairam Ramesh to Congress: Demonising Modi all the time won't help

New Delhi Prime Minister Narendra Modis governance model is not a complete negative story and not recognising his work and demonising him all the time is not going to help said Congress leader Jairam RameshIt is time we recognise Modis work and what he did between 2014 and 2019 due to which he was voted back to power by over 30 per cent of the electorate said Ramesh on Wednesday The Bharatiya Janata Party BJP got 374 per cent of votes in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections The NDA as a whole secured nearly 45 per cent of votesRamesh made the remarks while launching a book Malevolent Republic A Short History of the New India written by Kapil Satish Komireddi a political analyst He Modi talks in a language that connects him with the people Unless we recognise that he is doing things which people recognise and which have not been done in the past we are not going to be able to confront this guy said the Congress leaderAlso if you are going to demonise him all the time you are not going to be able to confront him warned the former Union minister who held portfolios of Rural Development and Drinking Water and Sanitation ministries in the Manmohan Singh governmentRamesh sought to clarify that he is not asking anyone to praise or applaud the prime minister but only wants the political class to at least recognise the traits he has brought to the governance particularly the economics of governance Let me tell you it is not a completely negative story when it comes to economics of the governance the politics of the governance is completely different said the noted economist adding the social relations that have been created out of his governance model is also completely differentTo prove his point Ramesh gave example of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana PMUJ and how successful it turned out for him In 2019 all of us in the political discourse made fun of one or two of his programmes but it has turned out in all electoral studies that the PMUJ is one single program which has been able to connect him with crores and crores of women and given him the political traction which he didnt have in 2014 said the Rajya Sabha member from Karnataka Now if we are going to run this down and say this is all hocus pocus and say these are wrong numbers we are not going to confront this guy he cautionedStating that something happened in the last decade which catapulted Modi from a nonentity in national politics in the 2009 general elections to someone who won elections back to back Ramesh said people of the country right or wrong are not relating current distress to his presenceWe talked about farmers distress through out our entire campaign people realise there was farmers distress but they did not hold Modi responsible for it You saw what happened in the elections result thereafter We have to understand what made him respectable he saidDubbing Komireddis book as an angry absorbing and exceedingly wellwritten one Ramesh said It is persuasive in looking at what happened in the last five years and looking ahead as to what we would expect from what has happened in the last five yearsRamesh however also expressed disagreement with the author who sought to blame the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his family for all the prevailing wrongs in the countryGoing 60 years back for something which happened in the last decade does not work out said Ramesh questioning the authors bid to blame Nehru for what ails the country today Published by Westland the book claims to retell and recount the betrayals of Indias republican promise over the last 70 years and retraces the path that modern India has treaded since 1947Edited by midday online desk with inputs from PTICatch up on all the latest Crime National International and Hatke news here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates