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.

Rahul Gandhi - Failure Analysis To Improve Learning

Failure analysis to improve learning is not a bad idea at all. That is what Rahul Gandhi is currently doing in the family backyards of Amethi and Rae Bareli. He is finally forced to listen to people who count. People on the ground! And they aren’t making music for his ears. I actually couldn’t find a good antonym for ‘Evolution’. ‘Devolution’ doesn’t exactly fit as an antonym. So the best I could come up with as a sequel to a previous post titled ‘Evolving the Gandhi’ was ‘Dissolving the Gandhi’. That one was about how NDTV wanted us to believe RG had evolved and was decimating every opponent in UP. This one is a lot more humble because it’s not nice to rub salt into wounds. So has the man learned anything? Well, first of all the Narcissist seems to be without his sycophant in chief, Digvijay Singh, for a while. If that riddance is permanent then it’s definitely is a good start. But has the narc himself changed any?

“It was a thoughtful, mature speech by young leader Rahul Gandhi. If you closed your eyes and listen to the voice, one could hear echoes of Rajiv Gandhi speaking 25 years ago..”. That was none other than Psychophant Chidambaram during the plenary session of the Congress in December 2010. And no, there’s no spelling error in the name. Any intelligent man would be seriously offended by such sycophancy, but RG either didn’t mind or let it pass. Then the titles of Yuvraj, Prince and all that probably led RG to believe all the nonsense being spread by a media fed and doctored by the ‘spinsters’ around him. Arrogance was further on display when a group of villagers from Ralegan Sidhi, Anna Hazare’s hometown, were led to believe that they were invited by RG for a meeting in Delhi. Sure, they turned up in Delhi in October 2011, only to be told no such meeting was scheduled and were sent back. That was an opportunity to build bridges with Anna but dealt with undiplomatically.

The list of extraordinarily silly utterances by RG  will make a very long list. There is a departure from the past though. For once, RG stepped up and stated he accepted responsibility for the thrashing in UP. What after that? Has he stopped uttering gibberish? Hardly! In a meeting in Delhi to analyse the UP disaster, to an angry member claiming Congress paid a price for ignoring upper castes, he proclaimed “I am a Brahmin too”. That gaffe was enough for another round of jokes on the social network and even in the MSM. That done, last week of April, he rushes off to Satara district in Maharashtra to visit drought-hit farmers and has lunch with some. Seriously, at age 41 do you have to visit every stricken area to understand problems? Droughts have been a permanent problem in India at some place or the other. And what do farmers have to say about his visit? “He has come, his father had come, Indira Gandhi had come but nothing has ever happened”. And Prithviraj Chavan, the CM of Maharashtra, tags along with RG on his trip like a small-time assistant.

Symbolic theatre like dressing up as a muslim or a tribal or eating at Dalit homes do not entice or impress voters anymore. It may have worked for RG’s grandmother and father but doesn’t work anymore. Even his greatest promoters in the media like Barkha Dutt of NDTV or Vinod Sharma of Hindustan Times have shut up after his moronic display and the UP results. Oh and where are the ones who cooed “She is so charming, so natural, should be in politics”! Well, that was about Priyanka Vadra who has simply disappeared from the scene after the elections for peaceful resort locations. Let’s see if she surfaces during the monsoon. In what should now be the most serious confrontation with truth for RG has to be his current visit to Amethi. For meetings to analyse the UP debacle RG had come prepared to give the little people a pasting but instead had to face a barrage of unexpected angry retorts from his own Congress workers.  All this came in response to Rahul's repeated warnings about taking action against erring party workers during the March election. Here are excerpts from Rediff.com

"Rahulji, you may fix the responsibility on us, but don't absolve yourself of the larger responsibility for the debacle." … According to an insider, one of the party workers in Salon, where the party nominee lost miserably, went to the extent of accusing Rahul of depending solely on "middlemen". He even sought to ask Rahul, can you recognise and name five workers who were closely involved with the electioneering process," to which Rahul confessed apologetically, "sorry". "How is it that your own party leader Pramod Tiwari managed to do so much for his constituency in the neighbourhood," asked another worker, leaving Rahul completely stunned. (That, in reference to lack of any development work in Amethi).

"What we needed urgently was ruthless surgery by plugging the loopholes and by restructuring the party well before the crucial Lok Sabha elections in 2014," observed Binda Prasad, the head of Chatoh Block in Salon assembly constituency. "It is high time our top leaders prepare themselves to listen to harsh truths if they sincerely want the party to stand up on its feet again," he added.

While accusing every other party of playing communal politics the UP election proved once and for all that the Congress is the most communal party in India and is hell bent on dividing the nation on religious and communal and caste lines. While he was visiting drought-prone Satara, RG’s mother was surprisingly charming the Lingayat community in Karnataka. If RG really wants to accept responsibility for anything he has to first act on something. First, learn about India and Indians. I mean seriously learn. People are not fools. Secondly, sack nation-dividers like Salman Khurshid, Beni Prasad Verma, Sriprakash Jaiswal who campaigned on communal lines. And, of course, he has to permanently get rid of muck-spewing Digvijay Singh. That’s asking for too much. His latest aide is a Jenny-come-lately called Meenakshi  Natarajan ,Congress MP, who wants to gag the media and wants a regulatory body with sweeping powers to ban and punish media. Hardly the wisdom learned from failures in choosing aides I would say.

Manish Tewari, in a debate last night on presidential candidates, suggested that in a nation of youth someone younger may be a better choice than APJ Kalam. Dr. Subramanian Swamy who was also on the debate pointed out to Mr.Head-To-Toe that it’s not how old you are but whether you are able to “inspire the youth” that matters. For a so-called ‘youth-icon’ Rahul Gandhi has failed miserably to inspire any confidence in anyone, young or old. Apart from a terrible poverty of knowledge RG is also handicapped by an equally severe poverty of ideas. Unfortunate, I would say, for a man who had so many opportunities. Another lesson RG must learn - whatever the media hypes, the opposite is usually the result. Failure analysis to improve learning is a good exercise, except that it has a flip side – the acronym is FAIL!

The Messiah's Transmitters

Sometimes a writer comes up with a brilliant line and wants to squeeze it somewhere in his article or story. Sometimes a film-maker likes to make an ‘Item-number’ the high-point of a movie. Yes, that sells! Then there might be a very thought provoking line like “Ask not…” by JFK which becomes immortal. And sometimes there might be the analogy that doesn’t fit anywhere but has to be used because the speaker was thrilled with the invention by the script writer. That’s what explains Rahul Gandhi’s statement on Monday, February 6 at Varanasi: “We politicians are just transmitters. Our job is to listen and transmit.  Our job is to understand and transmit”. Given that RG has been parading Sam Pitroda, the telecom specialist, here and there as a symbol of OBC progress I have a feeling the transmitter analogy might have come from Pitroda. There’s only one problem – Transmit to whom? The guy upstairs? Occupants of some inter-planetary craft? Well, whatever RG meant there are other ‘transmitters’ who do a lot of transmitting for him and about him. They are the wise, insightful ones who understand RG far better than lesser mortals like us. Some of them are in the print media and the others on TV. The 12 apostles. Collectively, they faithfully interpret and transmit the pearls of wisdom that RG frequently delivers us.

The transmitters are like a cricket team, 11 plus the extra man. You could call them the twelve apostles of the messiah. TimeGroup, Indian Express, Hindustan Times, IndiaToday group, NDTV, CNN-IBN, TimesNow, HeadlinesToday, StarNews, Tehelka, NewsX with a revolving 12th man. This time let’s start with the 12th man, former spook B. Raman.

It is one from the ‘intelligence’ gang who can analyse RG better than anyone else. Here’s a transmission from B.Raman: “If Rahul can avert a humiliation of the party in the forthcoming polls, that could be an achievement indeed keeping alive the political hopes and aspirations of the Party”. Aha! So the think tanks are constantly defining and re-defining what victory represents. If RG and Congress survive “humiliation” it would be an “achievement”! Mind you, not a majority, not a good chunk of seats but avoiding humiliation would be a victory. Surely, Mr. Raman sets the performance bar for the messiah really high. And we too should concede that if Congress is NOT humiliated then it’s a victory for them.

It is not disputed anymore that a huge majority of newspapers and TV channels are mere mouthpieces of the Congress party. NDTV and CNN-IBN lead the pack and have shed all pretenses of being independent news channels. This is good because they can now freely air their propaganda without being accused of being news channels. On February 6 a CNN-IBN beat reporter cooed a question “Why doesn’t Priyanka enter politics, she is such a natural?” Yes, everyone from the Gandhi dynasty is a “natural”. Lately, even Robert Vadra, Priyanka’s husband, has been campaigning and had some exciting sound bites to offer. He decided that it was currently Rahul’s turn, Priyanka’s would come in time and then he might join politics if people want him to. Of course, people want him to, so tonight at 10pm on NDTV Barkha Dutt will do an exclusive interview with Vadra and plead with him to join politics. And you’re dumb if you didn’t know that “She’s the people”!

Ya’ll are not born smart enough to understand RG. So here’s one more transmitter, Rajdeep Sardesai, the Feditor of CNN-IBN: “At the age of 41, Rahul Gandhi cannot be the eternal Peter Pan. It is time that we discover who the real Rahul Gandhi is. The odd combative press conference is clearly not enough to uncover the real Rahul. He has promised that he is in UP for the long run and has run a strong election campaign. We have just one simple question: would Rahul be tempted to become the UP chief minister if the Congress was in a position to form a government?” Damn! I thought ‘sad sack’ had already uncovered RG two years ago with an “Indian politician of the year award” when he explained Rahul’s great “vision” for India and how despite his young age he towered over senior politicians. And now he wants to discover the real Rahul, he wonders if RG would be tempted to be CM of UP. Funny, isn’t it? One transmitter thinks surviving humiliation is victory and another transmitter wonders if he would take up CMship.

And where transmitters are concerned nobody does it better than NDTV, the eyes, nose and ears of Rahul Gandhi. Quite faithfully they have transmitted 21 gospels by the messiah without fear or favour. These are listed here. What surprises me yet is that despite all the devotion and dedication neither Rahul nor Priyanka have given an ‘exclusive’ interview to Barkha Dutt yet. I expect Robert Vadra will compensate for that tonight. But don’t be disappointed! If you needed a comprehensive transmission of the life work and gospels of Rahul Gandhi you just got lucky. Only last month a complete biography of Rahul was released and it’s now available everywhere. This is just in time for election season.

Rahul’s biography has been transmitted by Veenu Sandhu and Jatin Gandhi. No no, Jatin Gandhi is not the great grandson of Nehru! The book will help you understand: “Who is Rahul Gandhi—the real man—beneath the hype and the hatchet jobs? What are the ideas and influences that propel him? Who are his advisers? And how will he tackle his new responsibilities as his mother, Sonia Gandhi, makes way for him?” Never mind that. It’s the lineage of the authors that should give you some idea of what the transmission would contain. Take a look:

Jatin Gandhi - Has reported from different parts of India for the last fifteen years for both print and electronic media, including the Hindustan Times, the Indian Express, Times Now, Star News and wahindia.com

Veenu Sandhu - Has reported on a range of subjects in a career that spans fifteen years and which includes stints at the Indian Express, the Hindustan Times and NDTV 24x7. She is currently Features Editor with Business Standard in Delhi.

So it’s not just Rahul The Messiah, but sister Priyanka, her husband Robert Vadra, their little daughter who are all out to send “messages” to us. Well, if they had cats and dogs they would be out there too. There is just one little problem. After stating “We politicians are just transmitters. Our job is to listen and transmit.  Our job is to understand and transmit”, In the list of 21 gospels that NDTV faithfully reproduced you will not find this fantastic piece of transmission from Rahul Gandhi: “I don’t care about election results”. So much for listening, understanding and transmitting!