Amethi: The narrow road leading to Amethi's Ramleela maidan from the town's central circle resembled a tense locality prior to a fight between two rival gangs.
Separated by four battalions of police were the Congress flag waving people of Amethi on one side, and a long AAP procession of vehicles from neighbouring districts like Pratapgarh, Jagdishpur, and Lucknow. The caravan led by party leader Kumar Vishwas was anything but welcome in this Congress citadel in Uttar Pradesh.
Be that as it may however, the local turnout for the Aam Aadmi party's maiden public rally in the heart of UP prior to the Lok Sabha election, did give the new party reasons to celebrate. According to police estimates, around 10,000 people attended.
There was a large crowd of people at the rally: PTI
The leaders at the rally did manage to win over the crowd, with a slew of jokes and sarcasm directed at the Gandhi family and Rahul in particular. In fact, large parts of the speeches by Kumar Vishwas and Sanjay Singh, who have been put in charge of UP, focused purely on bashing the dynastic nature of Indian politics, or more specifically, the Congress party.
Singh started out by listing family ruled political parties. The speech was well received and the cheers were loudest when he got to "Chacha Nehru and went on to the pota poti (grand children)
Despite the fact that it had a ground full of cheering people hurling slogans at the political dynasties however, today's rally will not give AAP much hope if the objective was to woo Amethi.
For one, a large number of people at today's rally came from neighbouring districts. Also present were AAP supporters who had come to Amethi from as far as Allahabad, Varanasi and Bijnor. Beyond the fact that the rally was physically held in the town of Amethi, the vast rural constituency hardly figured in today's grand scheme of things, barring two occasions when Sanjay Singh brought up the issues of NREGA wages and the planning Commission's recommendation that the rural poor could live on Rs. 26 per day.
Also worrisome for the Aam Aadmi party should be the fact that beyond the sub urban sectors of Amethi, the people in its villages heard the name of the party for the first time today. This was evident when Firstpost visited a few of these villages. Not only did the residents not know AAP or the new CM of Delhi, but they also seemed unaware that the national political discourse, these days, revolves around a person named Narendra Modi.
What they do know and care about however is that one sack of cattle fodder is now sold for rs. 1,200 - a price that could shoot up to as much as Rs 2,000 in the black market.
"Congress, SP, BSP they all beat their drums that are made with the skins of farmers. No one really cares for us. And we don't really care about anyone either," says Mohammad Anwar from Jamo. But both he and Savitri Devi, a Dalit farmer's wife from village Bhoi know who the Gandhis are. They remember the names of the people that Kumar Vishwas today referred to as 'princes and queens.'
Sixty years of apathy from both the center and the state have caused these people to forget that their displeasure, which reflects in their vote. "Whoever I vote for it will all be the same. So I'd rather vote for the Congress because that's what we have been doing since the time I can remember," says Mohammad Ali, 50, a farmer. For Ali, the owner of 4 bighas of land, who by no conventional means is a poor, the biggest worry is the price of fertiliser.
Kumar Vishwas called on the people of Amethi to break their shackles and free themselves from the slavery of the Gandhi family. But for that to really happen, a mere call from the stage and a fiery speech might not be sufficient.
Farmers like Mohammad Ali will only listen to people who will talk about his worry over the increasing price of fertiliser. And Kumar Vishwas did not do that. If he is serious about Amethi, he will have to walk through its dusty fields and reach out to every single person.
The faces of the dynasts are etched in the minds of the voters here. To uproot those images is a task that certainly cannot be done from only the stage.
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