India, March 7 -- In a piquant situation, vice-president Jagdeep Dhankhar on Thursday denounced the practice of populist moves to win elections even as deputy chief minister Eknath Shinde, whose Ladki Bahin Yojana is draining the state's finances, sat next to him. Dhankhar was in Mumbai to address the first 'Murli Deora Memorial Dialogues', the theme of which was 'Leadership and Governance'.

Speaking of this populism, Dhankar quipped, "A national debate is required so that we take note of the shift from Democracy to 'Emocracy'. Emotion-driven policies, emotion-driven debates and discourses threaten good governance. Historically, populism is bad economics-and once a leader gets attached to populism, it is difficult to get out of the crisi...