Whenever I see Rahul Gandhi, I feel sorry for him. He was forced to be a politician when all he wanted, as I perceived, was to live his life, marry who he wanted and take care of his dogs. I recall meeting a poor house painter Ahmed who I taught how to sign his name. He came from Amethi and he said that while the Gandhi family was there, there was no development, the roads did not exist and the family came on helicopters only for votes during elections.
I have known Ahmed for more than 13 years. We are still in touch and when he said some 10 years ago he was going to get married, I gave him a beautiful green lengha for his wife, which my mother had bought for me and which I thought was too grand for me. Ahmed never forgot it and adopted me as his second mother.
BAD ROADS, NO INFRASTRUCTURE:
I asked him why there were no jobs in Amethi as he had to work in Delhi and Bombay. He told me that even the rail coach factory that was set up in Amethi got most of their labour from outside. This was quite mystifying. Ahmed is an excellent house painter and with a little bit of skill training he would easily be employable in Amethi at the coach factory but perhaps due to his illiteracy, he never had a chance.
Like many poor families he never learned to read and write, yet he came from the bastion of a dynasty that practically owned Amethi. Even then the infrastructure was bad, the roads worse and the skill training for people like Ahmed did not exist. He said that while he was growing up the schools for his class of people from poor families were so bad, he dropped out.
I had always thought that Amethi in UP would have been a highly developed district seeing it was where the Gandhis got their votes from for decades.
Why did you keep voting for the Congress when it was not delivering I asked him. He said the decision was not his but came from local bigwigs who would tell them who to vote for. It was like a Mafia where the Don decided. This came as a shock to me and when just before 2019 elections, I met a Congress minister I told him point blank that Rahul would not win in Amethi again, yet he was not convinced.
The Congress had lost the pulse of the people and this minister told me that Gandhi family was the glue that kept the party intact and most of the old as well as the younger dynamic politicians were too afraid to speak up as they would be taken to task. This just seven months before the 2019 elections was a warning sign on how much entitlement and the Gandhi name had got entrenched within one of the oldest parties in India. It was difficult to fathom but the big win for the BJP, which I predicted after talking to people from all walks of life, was inevitable.
A RELUCTANT POLITICIAN:
Even as a Youth Congress leader, Rahul was not inspiring. His constant visits abroad, literally to escape from politics, convinced me his heart was not in politics. I felt sorry for him. Just because he came from a political family, I feel he was forced to take on a role where neither his heart nor his aptitude could handle the pressures of a political life. His connect with the people came from his name not from his ability and India had changed so much and the youth he tried to reach out to had aspirations that went beyond anything he could deliver.
Had he had a great plan he should have focused on a Congress Jodo Yatra instead of a Bharat Jodo Yatra. He meant well but achieved little in the larger scheme of things. Many stalwarts of the Congress Party have left under his leadership. This does not bode well. They feel slighted and say they are ignored.
Rahul gives the impression of an angry young man, not a leader who has a plan for a country of 1.4 billion people. He seems so angry and frustrated with India’s democracy that he denigrates it abroad. This only makes his party look bad in the eyes of the masses who he wants to woo. After all when it comes to votes it is the Indian public he needs to get on his side not UK or America. But he has alienated them and this really goes to show how the Congress has lost the pulse of the people.
Ashali Varma has authored the biography of her late father, Lt. Gen. PS Bhagat — The Victoria Cross: A Love Story. She writes a column ‘No Free Lunch’ for The Times of India, focusing on national issues and sustainable development.