Congress hasn`t done much on marketing: Pitroda

Bangalore: Congress has not marketed its achievements well, but there was still time for it to do so and the party would `definitely` win the coming Lok Sabha polls, Sam Pitroda, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Public Information Infrastructure and Innovation, said here on Sunday. "Of course Congress party hasn`t done much on marketing, partly because PM is not a marketing type;....He is not going to go out and do press conferences every other day, he is not that type....," he told reporters here. "As a citizen I feel that we had a situation where Mrs (Sonia) Gandhi did not speak much, PM is not the one who speaks, then Rahul cannot speak because if he speaks people will think he is interfering with the PM. None of the other ministers also speak....They should speak," he added. Pitroda was speaking on the sidelines of an event organised to inaugurate India`s first trans-disciplinary health University- `Institute of Trans-disciplinary Health Sciences and Technology` (IHST). Stating that it was necessary to take the message of achievements of Congress to the public and that the party has not done a good job in this regard, he said there was still time to do so. "I`m very confident.... There is enough time." Recalling that many had predicted that the Congress would lose the 2004 polls, Pitroda said the facts revealed that the situation was very different. He said part of the problem in India was that people have `outsourced` their thinking... Something which cannot be done. Today people have outsourced thinking to media, he said. On the scams the UPA government is allegedly involved in, he said things tended to be blown out of proportion. "If you take telecom - telecom was a notional loss. 2G scam as people call it - to me it just happened, we didn`t lose money; low cost spectrum benefits you and me because our cost per call is going to be low, so money - government did not get, people got it," he added.

Clarifying that he did not have much knowledge on the coal scam, he said when one does hundreds of things, there were bound to be a few things done wrong. "So if you don`t like criticism, don`t do anything." Terming as unfortunate, the sudden death of Sunanda Pushkar, wife of minister of state for HRD Shashi Tharoor, he said the couple are family friends. "I feel for the family."