Brand Gandhi

Every city, big or small, has one MG road - street named after Mahatma Gandhi. As far as my knowledge goes, these streets are the most important and well maintained streets in every city and it happened quite naturally as independent India became republic.

Many heritage buildings/institutes having British given names were renamed; the famous ones in Mumbai being Victoria Terminus station that became Chatrapati Shivaji Terminus station, college Victoria Jubilee Technical Institute (VJTI) became Veermata Jijabai Technical Institute, etc. Such heritage buildings, and so the brand value, are again naturally preserved.

Mumbai's land-mark structure Bandra-Worli sea-link, suffered a lot due to lack of political will. State govrnment had delayed payments to Hindustan Construction Company, the builder of the sea-link, and escalate the costs. The delayed cost escalation for the bridge was nearly five times, from 350 crores to whopping 1,634 crores. When it came to inaugaration, NCP chief Sharad Pawar suggested Rajiv Gandhi's name to the esteemed project in an attempt to mollycoddle the Congress, after latter's unexpected victory in the last Lok Sabha elections in May 2009. BJP's suggestion of naming it after Veer Savarkar, as the freedom fighter stayed close by in Dadar and has history relating him to sea, met stunning silence after Congress's nod to Pawar's suggestion. This is an example of how sycophancy is proliferated in Congress.

The above mentioned project was named after the initial phase of the project was through. But there seem to be projects being named after the Gandhis that have gone bad, that the "Gandhi-led" government in the centre has recently ordered to sparingly use Indira and Rajiv Gandhi's name as projects turn out to be shoddy and at times ill-maintained.

If we go to the crux of the issue, it has many dimensions to it. First being corruption, due to which projects become sub-standard and turn bad. Second being breeding of sycophantic Congressmen, who name projects after the Gandhis for political mileage. Third and the most important being the above order, in which the Congress has asked it's ministers to sparingly use the Gandhi name instead of ensuring that the project meets all standards and corruption is eliminated completely. What matters the most to the Congress is the brand image of the Gandhi family and not the project or brand India for that matter!