Marketing succeeds only if product is good: Sushma

PM has come to power by selling a pipe dream and is now unable to provide a blueprint on how to deliver the promise: Oppn.

With members of the Opposition taking potshots at the Bharatiya Janata Party’s marketing skills, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Wednesday sought to tear into their argument by saying that marketing succeeds only when the product on offer is good.

Speaking for the BJP during the discussion on the Motion of Thanks for the President’s address, Ms. Swaraj said: “Our victory is not the result of good marketing but a reflection of the quality of the product.” This, according to her, was also evident in the renewed interest in India the world over.

As for the criticism that the government had only repackaged programmes of the previous government in its statement of intent through the President’s address, the Minister wanted to know if the decision to open Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management in every State was not a policy decision.

The second day of the discussion on the Motion of Thanks followed the previous day’s trajectory with the Opposition maintaining that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had come to power by selling a pipedream and was now unable to provide a blueprint on how to deliver on the promise.

Flagging this, Tariq Anwar (Nationalist Congress Party) pointed out that the BJP had even shifted the goal post by now touting the China model of development after contesting the entire election on the Gujarat model.

The BJP’s opening speaker Rajiv Pratap Rudy’s repeated reference to China was described by Sugata Bose (Trinamool Congress) as “starry-eyed,” completely ignoring that China had single-party rule while India was a democracy.

‘Old wine in new bottle’

Amarinder Singh (Congress) described the promises made in the President’s address as old wine in new bottle, and wanted to know how the government proposed to move from poverty alleviation to poverty elimination.

Mulayam Singh (Samajwadi Party) demanded a time frame on when all the tall promises made by the government in the President’s address and the BJP in the run-up to the elections would be realised.

Referring to the “signs of arrogance” within the ruling benches, he sought to remind them that others had got even clearer and bigger mandates in the past — Indira Gandhi in 1971 and Rajiv Gandhi in 1984. “Look what happened to both in 1977 and 1989 respectively.”