Go global, not local

The Congress party has a central-level campaign committee that looks after election campaigns. So, when the committee met a few weeks ago to discuss the campaign strategy for Haryana, it found the chief minister there, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, had already started his ad blitzkrieg. A senior party leader called up Hooda to ask him who had been employed for the ad campaign. Hooda said that there was no need for the party to get involved since the government’s own machinery was doing a good job. He was, in turn, told to stop his campaign and leave it to the central-level campaign committee.