A good headline can make not just good business, but good politics as well. Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to be ahead of the rest of his contemporaries in understanding this. He is not a conventional politician. Like a shrewd chief executive officer (CEO) of a big company, he knows what to say and when. Sometimes in past he has also shown, how and when to act on what. The removal of HRD Minister Smriti Irani during his Cabinet Expansion last month, and even yesterday’s surprise announcement of the name of Vijay Rupani as BJP’s next CM in Gujarat are some recent examples to prove his shrewdness.
Today he took it even further by lashing out at the cow vigilantes trying to spread havoc across the country in the name of saving the animal. “Some people have set up their shops in the name of ‘gaurakhsa’, he said, asking the state governments to prepare a dossier to find out the real identity of the vigilantes’. With this the PM scored atleast two political goals: First, he has sent out a message to those who attack BJP for allegedly supporting the cow vigilantes, that he doesn’t support such acts. Second, he put the onus of dealing with the ‘gaurakshaks’ on the state government. This is significant in view of next year’s Assembly elections in UP as well as Gujarat. He should be, however, credited for highlighting the deaths of cows due to plastic eating, which is really a serious matter.
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The best executive chose the best opportunity to speak on issues. There couln’t have been a better opportunity than the western-style Townhall meet which was being watched not only in India, but perhaps, outside as well. However, the questions and PM’s answers were turning out to be routine, many of them often raised by citizens on the MyGov platform. Perhaps he understood this and left a headline for everyone to talk about.