Gandhiana: The Son Is Not The Father

Don’t bother to look for pictures of Manmohan Singh in Amethi and RaeBareli, even if he is Prime Minister. Wall space here is mainly reserved forGandhis -- dead and alive. Wrapped up in their love affair with the FirstFamily, the two parliamentary constituencies seem like identical wings ofFortress Gandhi in an Uttar Pradesh largely unenthused by the Congress. Butnearly two years after they swept Sonia and Rahul Gandhi to the Lok Sabha withpredictably huge majorities, they also come across as a study in contrastingmoods.

Rae Bareli, the original Nehru-Gandhi pocketborough that was palmed off tosatraps after 1980, is today a long-ignored child basking in the sunshine ofparental attention. Amethi, on the other hand, can’t quite shrug off memoriesof its golden age that lasted through the ‘80s, when it was the cossetedconstituency of Rajiv Gandhi, a Prime Minister with a brute majority inParliament and a UP Chief Minister at his beck and call. Moreover, Congressworkers reared in the politics of patronage and heady proximity to high-profileleaders, seem out of step with Rahul Gandhi’s evolving style, whichboth fans and critics aver, is quite different from that of uncle Sanjay andfather Rajiv.

In the mofussil town of Rae Bareli, with its overabundance of ‘60sbuildings painted PWD yellow, you will bump into toothless Congressmen who talkabout Feroze Gandhi’s election campaign, run out of just one pick-up truck,and how Rae Bareli is the original home of Gandhi family myth-making – themyth of "Mother Indira" was born in an emotional speech here by Indirain 1967. For old-timers like Indira’s former election agent, Gaya PrasadShukla, 87, who went on a self-initiated 200 km drive through the kasbahslast week to drum up crowds for Sonia Gandhi’s rally last Wednesday, surpriseat Sonia’s resignation is no match for the shockwaves that emanated fromIndira’s decision to forsake Rae Bareli for Medak in 1980.

However, for Rae Bareli’s younger folk, past and present have a differentmeaning. The past is being Amethi’s poor relative, and the present renewedlinks with the First Family that no one takes for granted. The buzz is aboutpost-Sonia benefits like roads being repaired, better irrigation andelectricity, and the revival of the faltering Indian Telephone Industries (ITI).But as Ram Bahadur Verma, Head of the Department of Political Science, FerozeGandhi Degree College, clarifies, "The affection that people here feel isfor the Gandhi family, not for the Congress – when it comes to them, there areno caste, creed or party barriers. But Congress will be lucky if it wins even asingle seat here in the Assembly elections."

As if to echo his point, villagers in Kucharia, 12 kms away, where the officeof profit controversy has filtered down in the simplistic terms of "Soniavs Mulayam and Amar Singh", are only too ready to do battle for Sonia."Muh tor jawab denge (We'll give a befitting reply)," saysShriram Rawat. But the slogan is "Sonia sansad, Akhikesh vidhayak"(Sonia MP, Akhilesh MLA). Akhilesh who? Sitting MLA Akhilesh Pratap Singh,expelled Congressman and mafia don, currently lodged in Rae Bareli jail

Potholed roads are being extensively rebuilt across Amethi, too, thanks to aninjection of central funds, and other benefits are trickling in, especially inareas such as education and healthcare. But the mood here -- linked to anavalanche of expectations – is qualitatively different. Ecstatic it might beat being back on the pedestal, as the launching pad for Sonia’s electoraldebut in 1999, followed by Rahul in 2004, but Amethi is also impatient toreverse the neglect it suffered in the 1990s and regain the clout of a VVIPconstituency.

Comments a UP Congress functionary familiar with the culture, "It’sthe kind of place where handpumps are seen as a status symbol. The continuingpressure to install them often has more to do with political requirements thanactual requirements." There is also a clamour for new industries, toreplace those that abandoned the constituency after Rajiv’s death.

And then there’s the Rahul factor. Lineage combined with good looks makeshim a star of the highest megawattage, and it helps that the young MP is alsodiligent. His visit here, the day after Sonia’s rally, was his 24^thin the last two years. He is sceptical with favour-seeking workers and put up aboard saying he did not want his feet touched. He favours informal, unscheduledvillage walkabouts over publicised roadshows thronged by workers, is hot oncomputerised lists of party workers and a "request management system"that requires villagers to tick boxes in multiple choice forms instead offlooding him with handwritten missives. "With one click, he wants to knowhow many job applications there are, how many workers we have in eachhamlet," says aide K.L. Sharma.

So far, so efficient. But his managerial style has its critics. JagdishPiyush, diehard loyalist and indefatigable producer of doggerel in praise of theFirst Family, has made a lucrative career out of churning out Rajiv Chalisas,slogans, ditties, and hardback titles like "Sonia Gandhi, Rajniti kiPavitra Ganga (Sonia Gandhi, the pure Ganga of Politics)" from hispetrolpump in Gauriganj, a gift from Sanjay Gandhi. But on Rahul he is less thansyrupy:

"Rajiv Gandhi har kaam dil se karte the, Rahul dimag se karte hain…Haradmi ko chor ke nazar se dekhte hain (Unlike Rajiv, Rahul follows his headrather than his heart and tends to be suspicious of everyone’s motives). It’sbetter to keep your distance from him rather than try to get too close,"says Piyush mournfully. "Like with a boy who has come back from abroad..youfeel, naraz na ho jayenge kisi ki phuharpan se (He may get put off byuncultured behaviour)."

Fresh from garlanding Sonia at her rally, UP’s Youth Congress GeneralSecretary Rahul Dev Singh, who hails from Tiloi in Amethi, also acknowledgesthat Rahul’s style takes getting used to. "Rahul Gandhi makes workersfeel a little disappointed. "Char log mala banate hain, wo mana kardetehain. Worker kya sochega? (You make a garland for him, but he turnsit down. What will the worker think?)"

Putting workers in their place may be all very well. Says Verma. "Thepeople here have no great respect for Congress functionaries, who are largelyseen as thekedars and dalals.. But there is a problem with Rahul,too – he is not coming across as a natural leader. He needs to be more dashingand more expressive."