Rajiv Gandhi promises to complete all projects Sanjay in Amethi

Rajiv addresses a meeting at Musifirkhana: A foregone conclusionFor the new Congress(I) messiah, Rajiv Gandhi, the loss of his political virginity at Amethi, his brother Sanjay's former electoral patch, promises to be a painless affair. Last week, jogging lightly into the final lap of the electoral race, Rajiv was being carefully shepherded into the inside lane with a barrage of whispered advice being directed at him from the sidelines. With his prospective contenders still to get off the starting blocks it was obvious that Rajiv was conserving his stamina for the final burst to the tape. But judging by the relative obscurity of his rivals and the powerful tailwind behind him, Rajiv's entry into the Lok Sabha is a foregone conclusion.There is, inevitably, an element of irony in the fact that Rajiv has shrugged off his earlier moral inhibitions and will climb the first rung on the power ladder from the same electoral launching pad used by his late brother, Sanjay - Amethi. As the most significant dot on India's political map with the possible exception of Medak, Amethi wears a singularly depressing air. A bleak and barren parcel of land wallowing in the backwaters of Uttar Pradesh, Amethi seems a living monument to desolation. The fields that stretch into the shimmering haze of the horizon are parched and cracked and even the scraggle of villages that relieve the geographical monotony seem weighed down with the effort of survival. The sweaty somnolence that envelopes Amethi is a tangible experience. At regular intervals, dusty, forlorn boards announcing various aborted Sanjay projects appear like forgotten sentinels, mocking reminders of a legacy that is still to be fulfilled.Difference: Judging purely by his performance on the campaign trail, Rajiv will obviously find that a near-impossible task. From the day he rode into town in his starched white kurta-pyjama, the perennial five o'clock shadow framing his face, the dramatic differences between him and Sanjay were starkly obvious. Sanjay's Amethi onslaught was conducted like a military operation, well-planned, well-orchestrated and there was only one voice of command - Sanjay's. Rajiv accompanied by Arun Nehru (fifth from left) arrives for his first public meeting after visiting a temple : No turning backIn comparison, Rajiv's electioneering debut resembles a multi-ringed circus with nobody aware of what the next act will be. Nobody, that is, except Arun Nehru, Rajiv's cousin and alter ego and MP from neighbouring Rae Bareli, Mrs Gandhi's former constituency. From the minute that Rajiv landed at Lucknow's primitive Amausi Airport en route to Amethi, Arun Nehru made it abundantly clear that he was cracking the electoral whip and he would brook no outside or local intrusion. The first to get the unpleasant message was Uttar Pradesh's embattled Chief Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh. Singh took Rajiv aside at the airport and complained that he had only been allotted one day to campaign for Rajiv in Amethi, only to be brusquely ordered by Nehru to "look after your own constituency". He then bundled Rajiv into the waiting car, but not before he had semaphored his second message - keep the media away from Rajiv. When the 152-car cavalcade finally set off on the bone-jarring, three-hour run to Amethi, only National Herald reporters and those with oft-displayed Congress (I) sympathies were allowed to clamber aboard the available transport.Since then, Nehru has kept Rajiv on the move, orchestrating the campaign from his mobile headquarters. In the process, he has ruffled a local feather or two. None of the five local headquarters has prior knowledge of the candidate's movements and local Congress (I) leaders, including Sanjay Singh, who masterminded Sanjay's campaign in 1980 and wields powerful electoral clout in Amethi, and the local Congress (I) district committee have been rudely sidelined. "With the kind of methods they are using, the party could have put up a deaf and dumb cripple and he would have been elected easily," wryly remarked a Congress (I) MLA in Amethi.Incongruous: So far, the only people permitted to enrol in the Praetorian Guard that has rapidly closed ranks around Rajiv are his close associates, mainly Doon School cronies who look about as incongruous in Amethi's dusty and garbage-strewn bylanes as a Bishop would in a brothel. Easily recognisable by their starched, newly-purchased kurta-pyjamas, carefully combed hair and after shave splashons, they wander around with a knowing air, sneaking surreptitious glances at the local maps each of them has been issued with. Whereas the Sanjay Brigade consisted of aggressive, street-smart operators who blended easily into Amethi's rural backdrop, the Rajiv Brigade is somehow more effete and amateurish, standing out like the proverbial sore thumb. "Do you know that Rajiv sometimes even drives the vehicle himself," said Dhruv Sawhney, one of the clan, with almost childish awe.But that is a handicap that is likely to have little or no effect on the eventual electoral result. The approximately 7 lakh-strong electorate of Amethi, for all the bovine qualities they display, are nobody's fools when it comes to choosing their personal patron saints. To them Rajiv's victory, like Sanjay's before him, will bring unexpected manna from a parched heaven-schools, hospitals, factories, employment for their offspring, benign blessings from the Government in distant New Delhi. Electing anybody else will slide them backwards into their former obscurity. It is the kind of simple logic they are capable of absorbing and the crowds that have been spilling over at Rajiv's meetings wear a collective air of near-worship as if it were the Second Coming, which, in a sense, it is. "All the projects that Sanjay started will be completed," promises Rajiv in his rather ungrammatical Hindi, and it is almost like a weight being lifted from the congregation. Even their cheers are filled with a new hope.An IB car with mud-smeared number platesThere are, of course, more carrots dangling before their collective eyes. In his very first speech at Singhpur, Rajiv promised the electorate that the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited factory and a fertiliser factory were not being scrapped as some people were saying, but would definitely be erected, though on a different site. In some ways, Rajiv's bountiful promises only succeeded in striking the first of what have been a series of discordant notes.For one, despite the obvious political clout he has come to wield, he is hardly qualified to speak on behalf of the Government or the public sector. The other, is the rather disconcerting manner in which the party has been circumvented as far as Rajiv's personal ascendancy is concerned. "There is no party factor at all in this election," said Balram Singh Yadav, the state agricultural minister and one of the few local leaders who has been inducted into Rajiv's Amethi entourage, obviously because the backward votes he could influence constitute 20 per cent of Amethi's electoral profile. It is also being made clumsily obvious that Chief Minister Singh is persona non grata with the powers-that-be since those allowed into the inner circle, notably Balram Singh Yadav and the state Irrigation Minister, Veer Bahadur Singh and aspirant to the chief ministership, are political rivals of the chief minister.Tight Security: It is hardly surprising that Rajiv has been sucked into the state's contentious politics virtually from the moment his campaign started. Contrary to his constant campaign pledge that he will use no official machinery, no fleets of vehicles and above all, no VIPs and none of the electoral trappings that were used elsewhere, Rajiv's campaign is hardly the sort conducted by a political novice.In Amethi, Intelligence Bureau officials are crawling out of the woodwork led by a senior IB officer who travels around in a blue Ambassador with the number plates deliberately smeared with mud. In addition, there are an estimated 330 jeeps and private cars, many with Delhi registration plates, churning up clouds of dust all over the constituency. No comparable VIP would get the kind of security protection that Rajiv is being afforded. At every meeting, a ring of security men surrounds the dais and is also placed along the route he travels. Ajay Singh, Sultanpur's superintendent of police explains away the excessive arrangements with the excuse that it is necessary considering there are so many VIPs around, forgetting for the moment that Rajiv has stated that there will be no VIPs at his meetings. In fact, at his very first meeting, prominently displayed on the dais were Sitaram Kesari, a central minister and Sarup Kumar Bakshi, state education minister.And, if they were there it was evidently by invitation since the list of speakers at each of Rajiv's meetings is carefully screened by Arun Nehru, who has the final word on who will appear as guest stars alongside Rajiv. That they are required is equally and painfully obvious. Rajiv, like Sanjay before him, seems to have inherited none of the family's oratorial talents. His first few speeches were brief and disjointed and his favourite punch line is the work-more-talk-less refrain patented by Sanjay. He lacks the brash confidence that Sanjay displayed and, unlike Sanjay, finds it uncomfortable to deal on a personal level with the local villagers. At one stage, he was confronted with a gaggle of village women and there was an embarrassing silence with neither party knowing how to break the ice. But these are minor handicaps in a race that is clearly destined to symbolise his official political debut. And, if the absence of frenetic electioneering activity and graffiti-smeared walls appears incongruous, it is merely a measure of the electoral confidence. It is obvious that the manner in which he has the constituents eating out of his hand is not because of any personal charisma but because of the new power structure that he now represents, even in the backwoods of Amethi. But for Rajiv Gandhi, Amethi symbolises something far more than just a passport to a berth in Parliament. For him, there is now no turning back.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Nov 20, 2013 08:17 IST--- ENDS ---

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Rajiv Gandhi promises to complete all projects Sanjay in Amethi

For the new Congress(I) messiah, Rajiv Gandhi, the loss of his political virginity at Amethi, his brother Sanjay's former electoral patch, promises to be a painless affair.

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