Love & Loathing In Amethi

There are times when the king or queen would come down from their royal palace and provide the wretched citizens with a glimpse of them. These are those times in Amethi, the district where Rahul Gandhi is contesting LS election from. It is also the district that is supposed to be the ‘bastion’ or ‘real estate’ of the Gandhis. It is fantastic how Sonia Gandhi views Amethi. It’s not as if RajivG or RahulG were supposed to look after Amethi but Amethi that is supposed to look after them. Here’s what she said: “Ms. Sonia Gandhi said she was following the tradition of Indira Gandhi, who had entrusted her son “Rajivji” to the people of Amethi; likewise, she entrusted her son, Rahul, to them in 2004”. So it’s like “we have already given you two males from our family, what more do you want”? Ever since then, Amethi has been paying dowry for these two “dulhas” that the Gandhi family has given them.

In any other democratic country the nonsense of such dialogues from the Gandhis and lately particularly from Mrs Priyanka Vadra would be scoffed at in late night comedy shows. The utterances of all three, Sonia, Rahul and Mrs Vadra, are great stuff for satire and comedy. It is just that our corrupt media is as much a slave to these non-performers as the blind-love people in Amethi are in. Seriously, what kind of juvenile jerk tells people “we do things with love, they do things with hatred”. And that is RahulG’s political discourse. It’s devoid of any logic, any substance and as empty as the Congress’s performance in Amethi. Now his sister, the queen-in-waiting, Mrs Vadra, takes the same love-dialogue to her “subjects” in Amethi. She jiggies and wiggles with words and also waltzes over bricks and stones. It took a long time but somebody had to burst the bubble of this nonsensical political discourse of the Gandhis and Mrs Vadra. Narendra Modi did exactly that in Amethi on May 5. But he has been bursting their bubble for a year now in all his public meetings. I have long held that it’s the corrupt media that has failed to expose the hollowness of the Gandhis and more people are acknowledging it:

What is it that Smriti Irani said about Amethi? That 90% of Amethi households do not have tap water at home. That 80% of Amethi households do not have proper toilets. That a girls’ school in the area has no toilets. That a girls’ school operates from a warehouse in the place. And when Modi and others point out these issues the only thing Mrs Vadra can come up with is “they abused me, abused my husband, abused my mother, abused my father, abused my brother”. Sob! Sob! So talking about Robert Vadra’s scams is abusing her. Calling Pappu a “Shehzada” is abuse for her. Fact is, little Mrs Vadra is an empty whiner who has little or no idea about politics or governance. Naturally, the option left with her is to play victim. When Modi mentioned the arrogance of Rajiv Gandhi with an ex-CM of Andhra even when he was just a general secretary of Congress this is what little Miss Muppet came up with:

Your father has been insulted on the soil of Amethi? He is a martyr? I doubt anyone would consider what Modi said an insult. I doubt anyone would consider RajivG a martyr. The best answer to this nonsense of Mrs Vadra was a tweet that said it won’t be long before Nehru is also claimed a martyr by the Gandhi-Vadra family because he died of syphilis. And her stupid utterances are passed off by the media as under:

Of course, our media is too shy to call her Mrs Vadra because that name is associated with scams. They fondly call her another Gandhi. So far these Gandhis and Vadras have had a free run in Amethi (and also Rae Bareli). They have been given a walk-over by parties like SP, BSP and even BJP in these seats. Now that Modi has been at Amethi it is a great intrusion by a man who is unfit to be PM according to them. Also, the arrogance of the uncouth Mrs Vadra was demonstrated in abundance when she said “Smriti who?” about the candidate in Amethi. And once Modi held a big rally there our media morons promptly started screaming “Modi’s war against Gandhis”. That’s right, morons like Rajdeep Sardesai still haven’t reconciled to the fact that their days of ass-licking of SoniaG may not help them anymore. Modi calls these peddlers of lies and untruths a bunch of “News Traders”. And he has kept these corrupt news traders at a good distance during this election season. Arnab and Rajdeep are disgruntled over not getting a Modi-interview. In response, Arnab has been portraying Mrs Vadra as some kind of Joan of Arc and Rajdeep has been busy redefining terms:

Something is burning in Rajdeep’s studios and in his head. And the smoke comes out through his tweets. But it’s a nice touch. If someone calls you a thief, you redefine it by claiming to be “Robin Hood”. According to Rajdeep, people like Rajat Sharma, Smita Prakash and his own colleague Sanjay Pugalia are a bunch of idiots and he’s the only one who can ask real questions. Now you know why he’s a moron. When the Amethi issues were being raised, both Arnab and Rajdeep were questioning Smriti Irani and the only people to answer on behalf of the Congress was not the candidate but cronies who are as much ass-lickers as Rajdeep and Arnab are. The blind love of Amethi that the Gandhi-Vadra team exploits is best explained further by an article in Firstpost:

“But even she admits (a woman) that in their mohalla, little has changed in the pocket borough of the Gandhis. Sixth standard student Mohammad Nadeem says he has to go one hour every day to Rae Bareli because there are no decent schools in Jayas. The electricity is there for 4-6 hours a day, sometimes coming on only at 11 in the night. The local college has no teachers who stay on. For a good doctor they have to go Rae Bareli. There are no jobs. The young woman is finishing her intermediate and does not know what will happen to her afterwards. She wishes there were more police – there are too many unemployed youth milling around all day. But they still don’t blame the Gandhis. “It’s the city councilors who get in the middle who are corrupt. They eat up all the money,” says the mother. “The Gandhis are not to blame. Their intentions are good.”

Considering the clout they have within the Congress it should be considered a shame that their own territories of Amethi and Rae Bareli are in near shambles. Amethi in particular is a tragic story. But they have an answer to all this: “Amethi loves us”. It took the rest of the country a fair bit of time to come out of the Congress deception all these years. Maybe it will take Amethi some more time. But one thing is for sure; Modi has demolished and exposed the hollowness of the Gandhis and Mrs Vadra like nobody has done before. This hurts many anchors and panellists for whom the Gandhi-Vadra clan was bread and butter. They have become as irrelevant as the Gandhi-Vadra clan themselves in this election season. Sucheta Dalal puts it aptly:

It is true; love doesn’t get anything in return but love. So far, the Gandhis and Vadras were given a free run with this love potion in Amethi. This is a warning for them. The concept of endless love exists only in movies and fictional stories. Love must be demonstrated with acts. If not, it doesn’t take long for love to turn into loathing if not reciprocated. Ask Rajdeep and Barkha, they will tell you all about it. They know what a fall costs them.