Political speeches are tailor-made for the occasion, and who dare deny that Mr Narendra Modi comes close to being the consummate politician ~ although that description does not always sparkle with pristine attributes.

Hence his lauding the industrial/business community at a function in Lucknow has to be perceived in context: it was an industry-related event, so could he have been expected not to laud that community? Still, the Prime Minister has done well to blast the obsolete, antiquated myth perpetrated by Indira Gandhi and the socialist brigade that projected “Tata-Birla” as the root of all the evils afflicting a developing nation.

That projection also fuelled her garibi hatao campaign which, alas, proved no mere effective than the current pop-hits ~ sabka sath sabka vikas and achche din. India’s industrialists have contributed as much ~ or as little ~ to national development to yesteryear’s giants of the muchvaunted public sector.

The legendary Russi Mody once said ownership was irrelevant, there were only two sectors ~ the efficient and the inefficient. For all that the likes of sections of the Congress party, “comrades” Karat, Yechury and D Raja, might thunder, it was the “liberalisation” programme of PV Narasimha Rao/Manmohan Singh (actually initiated by Rajiv Gandhi?) that initiated the economic turnaround, and threw up the industrialists with whom the Prime Minister is not ashamed of being photographed.

Politicians are also ever-guilty of oversimplification, and so the BJP leadership must ask itself if commercial interests were not at the root of the several scams of which it has accused previous governments of perpetrating. Not just the Sonia- Manmohan UPA.

That history goes back a long way, to the time when the Vivian Bose inquiry commission “nailed” the Dalmia/Jains and a few of the more recent culprits have extended their tentacles to engulf those presently wielding authority.

And who knows, a change in government could result in a re-direction of the energies of the pet-watchdogs ~ the CBI, ED etc, ~ into probing recently-concluded deals. Crony capitalism is a universal reality, and NDA-II cannot claim immunity.

Like political speeches, photographs are also products of the occasion and today’s leaders might someday actually regret their presence in company of unsavoury characters: as Jayant Sinha now finds, and Indira Gandhi did decades ago when clicked alongside the bloke who was commonly known in Delhi as the “Cadillac pimp”.

If commercial houses were as noble as the Prime Minister has tried to suggest, there would be need to immediately discard the concept of “corporate social responsibility”.

And to let business houses take charge of the medical-care, housing etc of all their employees, reduce the expenses of the government on welfare measures.

That lies in the realm of the imagination, and the importance of striking a balance is critical, there is no scope for over-simplification. Like politicians, industrialists can neither be given blanket description like saints or sinners.