For RSS, India isn't shining yet

In the RSS's view, developments could only generate a feel-good factor which may not be real.

The government's campaign on shining India is likely to get a critical review at the pratinidhi sabha meeting , the apex decision making body of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which does not agree with the government's view on successes on the economic front.

The three-day meeting beginning from Friday at Jaipur is expected to blow hot and cold at the BJP on the eve of the polls in an apparent attempt to flex its muscle.

But the most significant aspect of the whole exercise will be an annual assessment of the developments within the RSS and its ideological fraternity.

Sources in the sangh said that RSS's influential general secretary Mohan Bhagwat, who will preside over the meeting, is learnt to have rejected the government's claim of shining India on the basis of construction of world-class roads and development in the telecom sector as unreal. In the RSS's view, these developments could only generate a feel-good factor which may not be real.

Bhagwat is expected to reflect the RSS's view that shining India would become a reality only when the poorest of poor person could get direct benefit from the development. "The impressive figures about development have no relevance," a source in the RSS said.

That the meeting will lay emphasis on swadeshi while explaining the RSS's economic world view will be another area of disagreement with the BJP leadership, which is all set to co-opt Manmohanomics- a term coined for pursuing economic reforms - during the PV Narasimha Rao regime.