Show Of Hands

Rahul Gandhi’s Kisan Yatra in Uttar Pradesh is part of a strategy to dent the support bases of the BJP and SP.

- Kaushik Deka

SEPTEMBER 15. 2.17 PM. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi has just completed a three-hour-long road show in an open mini-bus, snaking around the crowded streets of Allahabad, braving the scorching heat and occasional cloudbursts and delivering impromptu speeches. A vanity van is waiting which will take him to Kaushambi, 50 km away, where he will address a khat sabha of farmers, part of his nearly month-long Kisan Yatra, which started from Deoria on September 6 and will culminate in Delhi on October 2. The 2,500-km- long yatra will touch 39 districts, 55 Lok Sabha constituencies and 223 assembly constituencies.

Once inside the van, a sweating Rahul asks an aide to arrange a new kurta for him. “I’ll go out for the meeting even if it rains but I don’t have a spare kurta. Please get me one,” he says. He hears his assistants whispering that the journalists following him in an open truck are upset over the lack of refreshments. The Congress vice-president heads to the kitchen, pulls out several packets of biryani, bundles them in a polybag and tells his security incharge to hand it over to the scribes. “They must not go hungry,” he instructs the man and then gets engrossed in a briefing about the work of local Congressmen for the next stopover. At the end of the conversation, Rahul zeroes in on one Aslam Bhai as the best party worker from Murat Ganj where, 10 minutes later, he addresses a gathering of about 300 people from the steps of the bus. He gives a shout-out for Aslam who gets a chance to travel with him to the next stopover and chat about local issues and his choice of leaders from the constituency.