False start

Journalist M J Akbar, now a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national spokesperson, had a far from ideal start to his speech to the party's "intellectual cell" on Tuesday. He began by extolling the virtues of the Nehruvian years. Akbar, who authored a biography on Nehru in 1988 and was a Congress Lok Sabha MP in 1989, said the first 13 years of independence were an era of "optimism", of a time when India's democratic framework was consolidated and its poor given "economic hope". Akbar said he felt "sad" when economists criticised the three per cent GDP growth India clocked in those years, ignoring the fact that it was three times the GDP growth of British India. Akbar's praise of Nehru was met with nonplussed silence in the auditorium at BJP's national headquarters at 11, Ashoka Road. Akbar, always a discerning political bellwether, soon corrected himself by praising BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi to the skies - Modi's idea of secularism, the Gujarat economic miracle, and so on - so that his speech finally ended with thunderous applause.