Congress leader Sam Pitroda and pro-Modi diaspora to campaign in Gujarat

Sam Pitroda, the Chicago-based Chairman of the Overseas Congress Department of the All India Congress Committee (AICC) will hold meetings in five Gujarat cities this week to optimise the impact of party Vice President Rahul Gandhi’s recent American tour in the state election.

Telecom entrepreneur and development thinker, Mr. Pitroda, as adviser to former PM Rajiv Gandhi was instrumental in laying the foundation of India’s telecom revolution. As a mentor to Rahul Gandhi, Mr. Pitroda had organized the Congress VP’s speeches at multiple venues in the U.S recently.

Mr. Pitroda said his key message to the people of Gujarat would be of the international importance of the forthcoming state elections. “It is the state of Mahatma Gandhi, and the message from the state’s people will have an international resonance,” he said.

Mr. Pitroda said the big projects-driven model of development — “the American model” — had failed, and the world was now looking at the Gandhian approach as an alternative model. “Where the focus is on rural development, farmers, small projects,” he said, adding that America’s route of consumption-driven economic development

could be ruinous for India . “A person owning several cars and hundreds of ties was possible in America because it could suck the resources from all over the world. India cannot try to imitate that,” he said, on his campaign pitch. Mr. Gandhi made similar points during his American tour.

In Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Rajkot and Jamnagar, Mr. Pitroda will do town hall interactions with professionals and students in separate events.

Gujarati diaspora groups in America that are predominantly pro-BJP and pro-Modi are fine-tuning their campaign strategy for the state elections, their leaders told

The Hindu . A significant portion of the Gujarati diaspora are Patels, a section of them now on warpath with the BJP in the State. In earlier state elections, American Gujarati groups had carried out a massive campaign for Mr. Modi by mobilizing relatives and taking out media advertisements. But given the flux in the BJP’s social coalition, a different strategy is being fine-tuned for this year, it has been learnt, in order to avoid any negative fallout.