Narendra Modi meets Biplab ‘gaffe’ Dev today: Teaching his team to keep their trap shut has become a full-time job for PM

If someone was to spread a story that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold daily classes for BJP cadres on how to keep your mouth shut, people would not be surprised. [caption id=“attachment_4441731” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. AP[/caption] On Wednesday morning, Modi is scheduled to meet Tripura chief minister Biplab Kumar Deb for a heart to heart. Deb has been babbling more than a brook, and besides displaying his wisdom by passing such comments as the internet existed during the Mahabharata and young men should open paan shops rather than chase government jobs, he dramatically upped the snafu stakes with his comment on happy homes. In a starburst of incandescent genius, Deb said in Agartala: “A person who is not a good homemaker, who can’t keep his own family happy, can never make the country happy, can’t be a good chief minister, neither can he be a good prime minister”. This last gem could hardly have hit home harder and if the ‘bachelor’ prime minister is peeved, he has good reason. Who needs enemies with friends like these?

Keeping the errant flock in check and teaching them the value of silence is becoming a full-time job.

Every morning, the prime minister wakes up and probably wonders: Okay, which of my tribe is going to spoil it all by saying something stupid? For example, Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani comparing the search engine Google to Narada . While this week’s award for putting his foot in his mouth stays with Deb, for sheer patheticness it’s hard to beat the new Jammu and Kashmir deputy chief minister Kavinder Gupta, who anointed himself with wit and depth when he said the Kathua rape was a ‘small incident’ and did not deserve so much attention. Apparently, the media is making too much of a fuss over a little girl being raped, tortured and murdered. And this pearl of wisdom is flung at us just hours after being sworn in. What is the thought process? Do these politicos talk without thinking, are they ill-advised or do they have truly have single digit IQs which makes them believe their words have import and gravitas and are thus slaking the intellectual thirst of the public? And these are the leaders of the pack, not the rag, tag and bobtail party ranks making their common garden variety observations. Last week, the beleaguered Modi warned the BJP at large to zip it and not give masala to the media.

Which implied that their remarks were okay if it was not for the troublemaking media.

What Modi should have done is condemned the rampant idiocy on display, which has nothing to do with the media. A couple of days later, Modi invited the irrepressible Deb to New Delhi. This meeting will probably be served up officially as a bit of a chat, but one wishes to be a fly on the wall when Modi asks Deb what he meant about inept prime ministers whose worth is measured according to how happy their homes are. Even the Congress couldn’t have come up with a hit like that. The thing is, it’s not the statements which provide grist to media but the aftermath of the clumsy, oafish explanations that these individuals offer in defence, be it is an apology, a fragile defence (it was taken out of context) or a bumbling retraction. When Deb is with Modi on Wednesday, he ought to just hang his head and take it on the chin.