Bushisms

Going through a collection of Bushisms, I couldn’t help but wonder about India’s own political leaders as orators. I deem Barak Obama as a good orator as so many other US presidents before him. Sadly, India has not been so lucky in this division. You can hate but you cannot ignore the big festival of Indian politics, celebrated by 1.2 billion people. Oddly in this, other than Pt Nehru and A B Vajpayee, most other PMs have not been good orators. Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi had that magnetism and the ability to connect to the masses but lacked the magic of the former two PMs. Lal Bahadur Shastri gave the perpetual Jai Jawan Jai Kisan slogan but has few memorable speeches to his name. Deve Gowda sounded indolent and irritable. P V Narasimha Rao, Gujral and our current Manmohan Singh were erudite and scholarly, but could never electrify anyone. As we look forward, between our two future PM prospects, I think Rahul Gam can deliver better speeches than Rahul Gandhi (*no comments please, I’m kidding) while Narendra Modi has that authoritative voice, convincing personality and the ability to kidnap his audience’s attention. He rightly embroiders his speeches with phrases and imagery. He might turn out a good orator and I don’t know about his capability to be a good PM... Nevertheless, the billion strong Indians warrant the need for a powerful speaker who we can quote in our daily references. And that’d be great!!!