Jadgish Piyush, "poet laureate" of Amethi, is attempting to change with the times. After a lucrative career composing syrupy-sweet slogans, ditties and epic poems in praise of the Gandhi family, he is turning his hand to bile. "Ek bhaalu ka khel, bandar ka khel dikha raha hai, aur doosri sirf Rajasthan ki kathputli hai," he said with a sneer at his office in the district town of Gauriganj. The man is performing bear-and-monkey shows, the woman is a dancing puppet.
The man and the woman in question are, of course, Rahul Gandhi’s two colourful challengers in this election, poet-politician Kumar Vishwas of the Aam Aadmi Party and TV bahu-turned-parliamentarian Smriti Irani of the Bharatiya Janata Party. It would be an exaggeration to say they are giving diehard Gandhi loyalists like Piyush sleepless nights. But they are certainly pulling them out of their comfort zone.
First, they mark a distinct change from the modest and faceless opponents fielded by opposition parties against Rahul Gandhi, both in 2004 and 2009, making not just victory, but a whopping margin, a foregone conclusion. In a family fortress, an election is often all about the margin, and so it was in 2009, when Priyanka Gandhi traversed the constituency to boost her brother’s vote share. Riding on a surge in positive sentiment towards the Gandhis and the United Progressive Alliance-I government, he defeated his nearest rival, Asheesh Shukla of the Bahujan Samaj Party, by over 370,000 votes. He surpassed his 2004 margin by another 80,000 votes, and increased his vote-share from 66.2 per cent to 71.8 per cent. Perceptions of his performance in this election will be linked to how he stands in relation to his own record.
Second, the media story in Amethi has also changed. In 2004 and 2009, it was largely a PR blitz for the first family, with crowds, rose petals and cameras lovingly trailing Priyanka Gandhi as she made her way from village to village oozing charm in tasteful handloom saris. This time around, Rahul’s combative opponents, who are as media-savvy as Priyanka, will also be traipsing from village to village, not just for votes, but also for mileage in a TV war.
Kumar Vishwas’s campaign, which began three months ago, has already raised the bar for what can be said about a Gandhi in Amethi. His attacks are neither veiled nor respectful. He makes a point of mentioning that Sonia Gandhi went abroad to have her illness treated, not trusting Indian doctors and raking up huge bills. Who paid for them, he repeatedly asked his audience, pretending not to hear, until someone loudly says,“Janata ne diya." The public did.
Along with his broadsides on corruption and dynastic rule, Vishwas also raises laughter with salty allusions to Rahul, laced with chauvinism and double entendre. For example, he sometimes tells his audience that while he himself has taken up a home in Amethi and lives there with his wife, Rahul, who stays in a guesthouse when in Amethi, has neither a “ghar” nor a “gharwali” (house or wife). "Gharwali to vyaktigat mamla hai,” he continues impudently, “aap ki vyaktigat shamtaon par nirbhar hai ke aap pa sake ke nahi pa sake. Kisi ne aap ko is yogya samjha ke nahi samjha ke aap ko ladki ki zimmedari di ja sake… Kissi ne unko bahu nahi di, aap ne unko bahumat diya.” Never mind, getting a wife depends on your personal capacity, whether anyone thinks you are capable of handling the responsibility of a woman... Nobody gave him a wife, and then you went and gave him a majority.
With his colourful shirts and sleeveless jackets, his hair flopping carelessly over his forehead, his generously distributed party caps and his guitar–playing Saaz band, which follows him in a separate vehicle, Vishwas is quite a sight for the placid rural roads of Amethi. One morning last week he attracted crowds of about 500 at each of his corner meetings. Driving through the same places later, it seemed he had won more hearts than votes, and sowed some confusion too. “Pata nahi kaun the, topi de ke chale gaye," said a bewildered old man in an Aam Aadmi Party cap riding a bicycle. I don’t know who they were. They gave me a cap and went away.
While many ardent admirers of Vishwas’ oratory said they would still vote for Congress, there were a handful of young AAP converts, young men like Mohammad Salim, who declared,“After he spoke about dynasty and corruption, I understood everything." Recounting his own experience of the employment guarantee scheme, he said mournfully, “Rahul doesn’t pay attention, and the whole administration is corrupt.”
Irani’s arrival in the maidan this week will surely add to the excitement and the confusion. With the election just about a month away, she is a late starter who will need to establish her persona, of which there seems little awareness here right now. She will undoubtedly rely on Modi and “development”, murmurs about which can be heard.
Vishwas, in a conversation at Mohanganj in Tiloi last week, seemed none too pleased by her arrival, and said it was an effort to divide the anti-Congress vote. That must be Rahul’s hope, too.
There is undoubtedly greater outspokenness and a sharper body language here towards the Congress, especially on issues such as electricity and roads. "So jao to bijli aye, jag jao to jaye", you sleep and the electricity comes, you wake up and it goes, is an oft-quoted line from Vishwas’s speeches, with many telling you it accurately describes what they go through.
There is anger, too, at what is perceived as the first family’s reluctance to fight Amethi’s causes with the Samajwadi Party government that rules Uttar Pradesh, despite the fact that the Samajwadis are supporting the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government from the outside, and the two parties are on cosy enough terms to not put up a candidate against Rahul in Amethi or against Congress party president Sonia Gandhi in Rae Bareli.
Amethi also shows few traces of the euphoria one would associate with a prime ministerial candidate’s constituency, which is perhaps a silent acknowledgement of a changing world beyond its borders. The frequent invocations of, “Yahan Congress ka zor hai", the Congress is strong here, have a tired feel to them.
However, anger and ennui has had a peculiar way of playing out in Amethi. Voters in the Gandhi fiefdom have been abandoning the Congress with alacrity in assembly elections. A landmark was registered in 2012, when despite hectic campaigning by Rahul's sister Priyanka in the assembly segments belonging to the contiguous districts of Amethi, Rae Bareli and Sultanpur, 13 out of 15 Congress candidates were rejected by voters.
But in the Lok Sabha, it is the decades-old relationship with the Gandhis, part-familial and part-transactional, that has, so far, trumped disappointment, whether on local issues or Rahul’s inaccessibility to his constituents, a long-standing complaint. Even Rahul’s estranged cousin Varun, fighting on a BJP ticket from Sultanpur, appears to be mindful of the potency of the Gandhi name in these parts. Not only has he been reported to be talking more about his Gandhi connection than his leader Narendra Modi, he has also steered clear of any criticism of his cousins or his aunt.
The election result will show how far the AAP leader and the BJP Rajya Sabha MP meet Amethi’s definition of a strong candidate.
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The man and the woman in question are, of course, Rahul Gandhi’s two colourful challengers in this election, poet-politician Kumar Vishwas of the Aam Aadmi Party and TV bahu-turned-parliamentarian Smriti Irani of the Bharatiya Janata Party. It would be an exaggeration to say they are giving diehard Gandhi loyalists like Piyush sleepless nights. But they are certainly pulling them out of their comfort zone.
First, they mark a distinct change from the modest and faceless opponents fielded by opposition parties against Rahul Gandhi, both in 2004 and 2009, making not just victory, but a whopping margin, a foregone conclusion. In a family fortress, an election is often all about the margin, and so it was in 2009, when Priyanka Gandhi traversed the constituency to boost her brother’s vote share. Riding on a surge in positive sentiment towards the Gandhis and the United Progressive Alliance-I government, he defeated his nearest rival, Asheesh Shukla of the Bahujan Samaj Party, by over 370,000 votes. He surpassed his 2004 margin by another 80,000 votes, and increased his vote-share from 66.2 per cent to 71.8 per cent. Perceptions of his performance in this election will be linked to how he stands in relation to his own record.
Second, the media story in Amethi has also changed. In 2004 and 2009, it was largely a PR blitz for the first family, with crowds, rose petals and cameras lovingly trailing Priyanka Gandhi as she made her way from village to village oozing charm in tasteful handloom saris. This time around, Rahul’s combative opponents, who are as media-savvy as Priyanka, will also be traipsing from village to village, not just for votes, but also for mileage in a TV war.
Kumar Vishwas’s campaign, which began three months ago, has already raised the bar for what can be said about a Gandhi in Amethi. His attacks are neither veiled nor respectful. He makes a point of mentioning that Sonia Gandhi went abroad to have her illness treated, not trusting Indian doctors and raking up huge bills. Who paid for them, he repeatedly asked his audience, pretending not to hear, until someone loudly says,“Janata ne diya." The public did.
Along with his broadsides on corruption and dynastic rule, Vishwas also raises laughter with salty allusions to Rahul, laced with chauvinism and double entendre. For example, he sometimes tells his audience that while he himself has taken up a home in Amethi and lives there with his wife, Rahul, who stays in a guesthouse when in Amethi, has neither a “ghar” nor a “gharwali” (house or wife). "Gharwali to vyaktigat mamla hai,” he continues impudently, “aap ki vyaktigat shamtaon par nirbhar hai ke aap pa sake ke nahi pa sake. Kisi ne aap ko is yogya samjha ke nahi samjha ke aap ko ladki ki zimmedari di ja sake… Kissi ne unko bahu nahi di, aap ne unko bahumat diya.” Never mind, getting a wife depends on your personal capacity, whether anyone thinks you are capable of handling the responsibility of a woman... Nobody gave him a wife, and then you went and gave him a majority.
With his colourful shirts and sleeveless jackets, his hair flopping carelessly over his forehead, his generously distributed party caps and his guitar–playing Saaz band, which follows him in a separate vehicle, Vishwas is quite a sight for the placid rural roads of Amethi. One morning last week he attracted crowds of about 500 at each of his corner meetings. Driving through the same places later, it seemed he had won more hearts than votes, and sowed some confusion too. “Pata nahi kaun the, topi de ke chale gaye," said a bewildered old man in an Aam Aadmi Party cap riding a bicycle. I don’t know who they were. They gave me a cap and went away.
While many ardent admirers of Vishwas’ oratory said they would still vote for Congress, there were a handful of young AAP converts, young men like Mohammad Salim, who declared,“After he spoke about dynasty and corruption, I understood everything." Recounting his own experience of the employment guarantee scheme, he said mournfully, “Rahul doesn’t pay attention, and the whole administration is corrupt.”
Irani’s arrival in the maidan this week will surely add to the excitement and the confusion. With the election just about a month away, she is a late starter who will need to establish her persona, of which there seems little awareness here right now. She will undoubtedly rely on Modi and “development”, murmurs about which can be heard.
Vishwas, in a conversation at Mohanganj in Tiloi last week, seemed none too pleased by her arrival, and said it was an effort to divide the anti-Congress vote. That must be Rahul’s hope, too.
There is undoubtedly greater outspokenness and a sharper body language here towards the Congress, especially on issues such as electricity and roads. "So jao to bijli aye, jag jao to jaye", you sleep and the electricity comes, you wake up and it goes, is an oft-quoted line from Vishwas’s speeches, with many telling you it accurately describes what they go through.
There is anger, too, at what is perceived as the first family’s reluctance to fight Amethi’s causes with the Samajwadi Party government that rules Uttar Pradesh, despite the fact that the Samajwadis are supporting the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government from the outside, and the two parties are on cosy enough terms to not put up a candidate against Rahul in Amethi or against Congress party president Sonia Gandhi in Rae Bareli.
Amethi also shows few traces of the euphoria one would associate with a prime ministerial candidate’s constituency, which is perhaps a silent acknowledgement of a changing world beyond its borders. The frequent invocations of, “Yahan Congress ka zor hai", the Congress is strong here, have a tired feel to them.
However, anger and ennui has had a peculiar way of playing out in Amethi. Voters in the Gandhi fiefdom have been abandoning the Congress with alacrity in assembly elections. A landmark was registered in 2012, when despite hectic campaigning by Rahul's sister Priyanka in the assembly segments belonging to the contiguous districts of Amethi, Rae Bareli and Sultanpur, 13 out of 15 Congress candidates were rejected by voters.
But in the Lok Sabha, it is the decades-old relationship with the Gandhis, part-familial and part-transactional, that has, so far, trumped disappointment, whether on local issues or Rahul’s inaccessibility to his constituents, a long-standing complaint. Even Rahul’s estranged cousin Varun, fighting on a BJP ticket from Sultanpur, appears to be mindful of the potency of the Gandhi name in these parts. Not only has he been reported to be talking more about his Gandhi connection than his leader Narendra Modi, he has also steered clear of any criticism of his cousins or his aunt.
The election result will show how far the AAP leader and the BJP Rajya Sabha MP meet Amethi’s definition of a strong candidate.
