Rahul scared of more talented people: Jaitley

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Sunday targeted Congress president Rahul Gandhi suggesting that he is an "insecure leader" who is "scared of the shadow of more talented people" like Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In a Facebook post 'Is the Congress Party Now Paying the Cost for its Dynastic Character?', Jaitley criticised the Congress saying three prominent non-dynastic parties -- BJP, CPI(M) and JD(U) in the country while picking up the Left party's Sitaram Yechury and Prakash Karat and Nitish Kumar for special praise.

He said the dynasties impose leaders on whom "greatness is thrust on them.

"Some suffer from what psychologists now regard as the ‘Dunning-Kruger effect.’ Social psychologists Dr David Dunning and Justin Kruger have given an apt description. They believe that those who suffer from this effect have a bias of illusory superiority which comes from the inability of low-ability people to recognise their lack of ability," Jaitley said.

He said "such low ability people" cannot objectively evaluate their own competence or incompetence and this leads to their miscalculation in their assessment of the calibre of highly incompetent ones.

"There is little place for men of high calibre in dynastic parties. An insecure leader is scared of the shadow of more talented people. Is this the reason for the current mood within the Congress Party? Or is it also the reason which persuades the Congress President to cross the line of decency and dignity when he refers to the Prime Minister," he said.

He said the BJP has elected leaders of the calibre of A B Vajpayee, L K Advani and Modi as its front rank leaders.

"When the new generation of the Left took over, their dominant faces were men like Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury. Despite the limited impact of the Left, they had decades of experience and ideological clarity,” Jaitley said.

“After a series of splits and mergers, the Janata Dal (United), another non-dynastic party, elected Nitish Kumar, who will shortly be completing his third term in his office as Chief Minister. It goes to his credit that he changed the governance culture of Bihar," he added.