While addressing the gathering at the sixth Khushwant Singh Literary Festival at Kasauli, BJP leader and former minister Arun Shourie said that he made a mistake by supporting Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Speaking on the “How to recognise rulers for what they are”, he said that never go by what promises the politicians and the leaders make. Arun confessed that supporting Modi was his second mistake, while the first was supporting former Prime Minister VP Singh.
“I made two mistakes — by supporting (former prime minister) V.P. Singh and then by supporting Modi,” he said. VP Singh had led a Janta Dal government with the support of the BJP and Left parties from outside.
Arun said that never to trust on what the leaders say now, they should be judged by what they had said earlier. He then added that “actually don’t even go by what they are saying, but go by what they have been doing and what they have condoned in other people. So, that is very important for the future.”
He further added that great and detailed analysis should be done on what they say (the leaders) and then believe and judge them. Arun said that by not examining the details of the speech and promises, believing the leader is the biggest failure of people like him and the newspapers. Attacking Prime Minister, Arun referring to the claims made by Modi, while he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat said that the people believed in the Gujarat model, but in reality, it was nothing but an event management.
Addressing the gathering he also said that today everyone is surprised about the Gujarat Vibrant summits, Rs 10 lakh crore have been promised, Rs 15 lakh crore investment promised. But if the reality check is done, of all the pledges and promises done, only 6% of the investment was done, but it was a great business success though, he said.
Arun also attacked the Modi government on the failure of creating jobs, he said that the bJP government had promised to create 2 crore jobs every year, but have failed to do so. But ironically a few days back a full-page newspaper advertisement read that the ruling government had created five and a half crore jobs. Mockingly he questioned that “what kind of magic is this that so many jobs were created but we can’t see it.”
Speaking on the subject Arun gave a few guidelines saying that if a leader has to be judged, the main point to look for is his character and his loyalty towards truth. “If that is not there many other things will also not. Never believe that certain things being said by people close to a person are not being said by the person. Such leaders are ventriloquists,” he said.