PM Modi: Campaign in Poetry, Govern in Prose?

New Delhi: In the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections, BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi's campaign blitzkrieg was unparalleled.

He held 185 rallies, sometimes up to four a day, conducted chai pe charcha (discussions over tea) and posted daily tweets.

But since taking charge as the prime minister, Mr Modi has preferred to communicate through photo opportunities, press releases and sporadic tweets.

The PM didn't comment when K Laxman - BJP lawmaker from Telangana -- questioned Sania Mirza's 'Indian-ness'. Or when alliance partner Shiv Sena's Member of Parliament Rajan Vichare force-fed an employee, who was fasting for ramzan, at Delhi's Maharashtra Sadan. He didn't even make a statement on the recent riots in Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh or the blast in Pune.

PM Modi has also done away with the practice of taking along journalists on his foreign trips.
In a recent blog, Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar wrote, "The same person who thundered from every election platform about the venality of the Congress, and furiously twittered away about this, now silences his mobile and locks up his lap-top?"

"Where was the communication earlier, may I ask? The communication was a monologue and the media was reporting that monologue," says Congress leader Manish Tewari.

But BJP Vice President Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has defended PM Modi, saying, "As a BJP leader, he had raised a number of issues across the nation. If someone now wants him to talk on every issue in the country, I think it's wrong to expect this of a responsible and sensitive PM. His work will talk."

Anurag Thakur, BJP MP from Himachal Pradesh, agrees. "I don't know who is raising this issue. If it's the Congress, they got a befitting reply in the elections."

PM Modi seems to follow Mario Cuomo's line of 'campaign in poetry, govern in prose,' where, ironically, he has found support from former PM Manmohan Singh, someone who was himself the subject of harsh criticism from the BJP over his silence.