The Gandhis (Congress)
Won from Amethi: The Congress has won this seat 10 times since 1957 and the Gandhis five times.
Votes for Sonia Gandhi: 67.12 per cent (last election)
- Alarming levels of unemployment
- The most electricity that Amethi town gets is 14 hours a day
- No university. No technical institutes. Only a handful of degree colleges and two polytechnics.
- The constituency has only one big hospital
Want to know why the Congress so vehemently disbelieves the BJP's India Shining campaign? Visit Sonia Gandhi’s constituency. Now being handed over to son Rahul. It takes its name from a squalid little town called Amethi that is barely surviving rationed electricity, pot-holed roads, meagre avenues for higher education, excruciating unemployment. This despite the electorate here having voted the Gandhis to power over and over and over again.
Vishwanath Verma is sure he’ll vote for the Gandhis again. He’s unsure, though, as to why despite having voted for them always, his village Pure Motiram still doesn’t have electricity or a pucca road. He’s unsure, too, about the future of his children: "Even after passing class 10, I couldn’t find a single job for years. If we continue living in Amethi, my kids, no matter how well I educate them, will also be reduced to pulling a rickshaw like me."
The past some years have only seen avenues for employment diminishing. Locals recount the closure of manyfactories—LML Vespa, Usha Rectifiers, Shalimar Paints, Malvika Steel, Samrat Bicycles, Arif Cement.... Only four big companies remain: HAL, ACC, Indo Gulf Fertilisers and BHEL. And even in these, locals get jobs as factory hands at best. The Jawan Recruitment Centre, set up here during Rajiv Gandhi’s time, is also no more.
"There’s nothing here to interest investors anymore," observes Radhey Shyam Tiwari, history professor at Amethi’s RRPG College. "Neither incentive to set up shop, nor trained manpower to sustain work." Complains shopkeeper Vinod Kumar Mishra: "For education that’ll get one jobs as also for specialised healthcare, we have to travel out." Other than the few primary and community health centres that can only cater to basic health needs, there’s only one big hospital. Mishra’s father, who suffers a chronic spinal ailment, has to go to Delhi every month for treatment: "I’ve sent my seven-year-old son to do his schooling there, too...with the power situation so bad here, he won’t be coming home for his summer vacations either!"
Why keep voting for the Gandhis? Says Tiwari: "Why not? If the Gandhis, with all their clout, haven’t done anything for Amethi, what chance of any other politician doing better?" Rickshaw-puller Verma has a more succinct reply: "It’s a habit."
