Just before the much delayed BJP manifesto was about to go to press, Team Modi insisted on having a look at it in the wee hours of dawn. Team Modi quickly made some additions to make the manifesto punchier. Here they are:
Cricket
1) Ask Justice Mudgal to investigate why Dhoni did not send himself or Raina ahead of Yuvi in the T-20 WC finals
2) Develop 12 tear-away fast bowlers over the next 60 months (ok, this is a stretch goal)
3) All overseas tours to England, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand to be played in Dhaka and Mirpur, henceforth. Any final against Sri Lanka to be played in the Wankhede.
Foreign Policy
4) Get really tough with Sri Lanka on the Tamil issue. Right now, they just don’t seem to be intimidated by the men in blue.
5) Seek an apology from Nawaz Sharif for calling Dr Manmohan Singh ‘dehaati aurat’.
6) Appoint Arnab Goswami as our ambassador to Pakistan.
Media and PR
7) Convert @PMOIndia handle into parody account that will retain Dr Manmohan Singh’s DP and will continue to be handled by Pankaj Pachauri.
8) Privatize NDTV; One official government mouth piece, Doordarshan, is sufficient.
Administration
9) Add a new national holiday in addition to Republic Day, Independence Day, Gandhi Jayanti: Congress Mukt Divas, to commemorate the day BJP comes to power.
10) Create new cabinet post, Prime Minister Adjunct, for Shri LK Advani.
Culture
11) Introduce Sanskrit commentary for cricket matches; Find appropriate Sanskritized idioms for ‘just what the doctor ordered’, ‘going down to the wire’ to popularize Sanskrit.
12) Hire a personal grammar trainer for Ashutosh to contain damage to middle class psyche.
13) Start schools of moral science chaired by Alok Nath.
Economy
14) Grant industry status to composition of ‘ab ki baar Modi sarkaar’ memes, which now takes up a large fraction of social media activity.
15) Wage hike for all Ambani agents. This pretty much means the entire workforce.
16) Fix the IRCTC server.
17) Last but not the least, start work on the 2019 manifesto right away so that it can be released in time.
(With inputs from Ashwin S Kumar)