A Reachable Boy

Young And Restless

• Congress candidate Lalitesh Tripathi, one of RG’s “yuva faces”, was one of the few to win in 2012 UP assembly polls
• Rewarded with LS candidature, hopes his “responsive governance” moves in the past two years will work for him
• Mirzapur is one of the most backward regions in the country; Apna Dal, SP candidates are strong here

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It’s ‘organic utopia’ for the greenies—the family-patented ‘single malt’ cow’s milk that makes snowy butter and velvety cream cheese; the desi ghee and Dijon mustard that raises the free-range hen’s double egg omelette to easy rhapsody; the glass of iced lemongrass infusion and a whiff of basil oil lifts the delirium from the heat; even the chicken shit and cow dung boosts natural composting. The stunning surprise is the farm is not in Napa Valley but in the hell-hole of Mirzapur district, a vast, dry, poor countryside in eastern Uttar Pra­d­esh, once ruled by the grand kings of Kashi but today listed as one of the most backward regions in the country.

This isn’t a culinary ride or about communing with nature, and dusty Mirzapur doesn’t lure many poll pundits. Life is wretched here in its mud-caked villages, ordinary in its sameness with the nondescript neighbouring districts in the badlands of Poorvanchal, an administrative dot on the map. So what is it that makes Mirzapur compelling today?

In a delicious irony, Mirzapur has bec­ome a hotspot for Rahul Gandhi’s much mocked and reviled blueprint for touchy-feely democracy. Party candidate Lalit­esh Pati Tripathi, 37, is not even one of the topdog political heirs though he has all the credentials of old-style Congressi cul­ture­—political pedi­g­ree and privilege (his great-gra­n­dfather was the late Kam­alapati Tripathi, a former UP chief minister), but that’s where the difference comes in. Lalitesh is one of the “youthful new faces” recruited by Rahul G to work and train the grassroots party worker, who not only lives in the constituency he works in but will be the focal point of community politics, to ensure the maximum impact of government policies and programmes. These are the band of lea­ders who will be in the frontline of the new face of the Congress post-May 2014 elections, whatever the outcome.

If there’s any proof for the success of back-to-basics politics, it’s here in Mir­z­apur. Sitting in his trademark ‘gamchha bandana’ and kurta-pyjama, Lalitesh savours his victory in the last UP assembly polls of 2012. “There was something clearly amiss in our political methods,” says a chastened Tripathi, “that even after helping my father and grandfather in their elections—which they lost disma­lly—I continued to be a political tourist.... I would swoop down from Delhi during the weekend and do the usual drill of meeting local leaders, and fly out again. Clearly, it was not working, there was no connect with the people, there was no party strategy, it was not working for the party, it did not work for my family, it was not working for me.”

Then in 2007, Rahul’s clarion call to create the aam aadmi sipahi  (soldiers for the people) got Lalitesh out of bed (he was convalescing after an accident) to hobble to Hyderabad for RG’s convention to revitalise the party’s youth wings. The plan was textbook Gandhian principles—live and work amidst the people, keep in touch with their concerns, and apart from popularising the Congress’s flagship schemes like NREGA and RTI, liaise with power and administrative structures for the smooth flow of benefits and policies. “RG told us, be available, be visible in the constituency, and soon the party will know about you, and once the people want you, there’s no stopping you. It made a lot of sense,” says Lalitesh.

He moved to Mirzapur, leaving behind his Woodstock education and cosmo lif­e­style, to the vast and rolling Tripathi Org­anic Farm, rebooted by his American mother Laxmi, and dived into the hurly- burly of community politics—attending weddings and funerals, staging dharnas and protests outside and inside the DM’s office for water, power or compensation for villagers, meeting villagers and town people on a daily basis, visiting hamlets and colonies and, most importantly, being on call 24 hours a day. “So, whether it was rushing someone to a doctor or hospital, or finding a lost cow or child, we answered every call unfailingly. We get around 200 calls a day, and respond to every call diligently,” he says proudly.

The rewards were rich and profuse—Lalitesh was one of the two dozen victor­i­ous Congress candidates in 2012, in the face of a complete rout for the party els­e­where. Paying heed to RG’s advice, he plunged back into work immediately. “It was clear now that what we do after a win is crucial. The crux of the mission was to give responsive governance. We cannot be helicopter MLAs doing photo- ops, we had to be hands on, with our feet pounding the ground. I refused security guards and a gun-toting posse, this made me accessible and reachable. It was hard work as we had to liaise with a hostile state government and a partisan bureaucracy. It’s been a rough but rewarding ride the last two years,” he says.

To his utter surprise, Lalitesh was nom­inated as LS candidate for the Mir­z­a­­pur constituency barely a month-and-a-half ago. He beli­eves his hard work paid off and dism­isses any allegations of favouritism or partiality. “Winning is all that counts,” he says disarmingly, as he waves to children and women from the front seat of his snarling SUV, as we lurch from village to village on his campaign trail.

It was not all hard work and benevole­nce that marked his first victory—Lal­it­esh was fortunate to get the Marihan ass­embly constituency, a brand new district carved out after delimitation in ’09, so there was no incumbent MLA or str­on­g­man with enough influence. But Mir­za­pur is a different ballgame. It’s one of UP’s largest districts, covering almost 4,500 square km, has a population as big as Kuwait (as an aide puts it), and is lar­g­ely rural. Its former MPs have been the late, lamented Phoolan Devi, and the sitting MP is SP’s Bal Kumar Patel, bro­ther of the dreaded dacoit Dadua, who terrorised the region for over 30 years.

The main contestants are Apna Dal’s Anupriya Patel, who offered her Patel votes in Varanasi to the BJP, in turn getting two prized seats in Mirzapur and Pratapgarh; the bsp’s Samudra Bind, wife of Majhawa MLA Dr Ramesh Bind, a three-time MLA whose imperiousness is casting a shadow over his wife’s prosp­ects. The SP is fielding Surendra Patel, who was first chosen for Varanasi, but was mysteriously moved to Mirzapur, thus cutting Apna Dal’s Patel votes here, while saving the same for the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi!

Lalitesh has his caste arithmetic—the gravitational pull of electoral politics in UP—all tied up. If Marihan is dominated by Kols, Mirzapur is dominated by Patels, Brahmins and Kurmis. “Mirzapur ko Kur­miyon ka Baghpat banaiye (please make Mirzapur the Kurmis’ Baghpat),” ple­ads a prominent Kurmi member, all­u­ding to the Jat domination in western UP. With the Patels divided between the Apna Dal and SP, and the BJP opting out of the contest, at least the hyperbolic Modi wave from neighbouring Varanasi does not threaten to sweep the other con­testants away. It was a miffed Anu­priya, the 33-year-old inheritor of the Apna Dal, who apparently threw a tant­rum when she saw the BJP playing hoo­key in Mirzapur, and forced the party UP in-charge Amit Shah to hop into a cho­pper and campaign for her for a day. The Apna Dal faces a tough challenge as BJP cadres in Mirzapur are equally miffed with the party for dumping its leader, Om Prakash Singh, who had worked tirele­ssly in the constituency, only to be dro­p­ped unceremoniously for a no-risk vic­­tory for Modi in Varanasi. Anupriya is the sitting MLA from Roha­n­iya in Vara­n­asi. Modi is expected to ret­urn the favour by campaigning for her in Mir­zapur closer to election date.

So, will Lalitesh’s dharna democracy (he did it before Arvind Kejriwal!) propel him into the big league? There are hardly any signs of the vast and intertwining development schemes, projects and pro­g­rammes that criss-cross villages, from Dhansiria to Gajari to dozens of oth­ers. The ragged kids have no sch­­ools, the women wail about the lack of amenities, the men about jobs and facilities, even as Lalitesh lists out the benefits available to them at his chaupal meetings. If the mur­­murs in Mirzapur city are to be bel­ieved, he is certainly in the Big Fight. Random people on the street, from juic­ewallas to auto repairers, have heard of Lalitesh’s com­m­itment and conviction, and are impr­e­ssed by their “MLA in Mir­zapur”, who lives in the district and works for the people. Shopkeepers and traders are naturally for Anupriya Patel, and say victory is hers if Modi campaigns for her. It’s a fight between the earnest povertarian and the flashistas.