Rae Bareli/Amethi, Feb. 4: Priyanka Vadra held a lesson in political science. But local Congress workers were not amused at being "talked down to", as a couple of them dubbed her QandA session.
At Terhut village in Amethi, brother Rahul Gandhi's Lok Sabha seat, Priyanka engaged directly with the crowd by asking: "Do you know what the impending election is about?"
"This is a Congress election," replied someone.
"No, it is not," said Priyanka.
"Then it must be Rahul's election," said another.
The smile did not leave her face but the impatience in her tone was audible. A Congress worker decided to end the exchange with a staccato interjection: "It is an Assembly election."
Priyanka was relentless with her inquisition. "Tell me what is a legislative Assembly? Who are you electing?" she asked.
"Somebody who will serve us," said a voice.
Beaming, she continued: "Has your MLA served you well?"
She was hoist with her own petard ' but just so. "Neither our MLA nor our MP has served us well. It has been three years since we elected our MP but he has not shown his face," shouted someone.
If Rahul became this village's MP after it was integrated with the Gauriganj Assembly seat post delimitation, his predecessor Sanjay Singh was also from the Congress. The Congress's saving grace was this constituency had voted BSP in 2007 and Priyanka used it to expatiate on the main theme of her speeches.
That is, if a legislator and the MP happened to be from different parties, it would create a "political contradiction" that was bound to impede development and welfare.
"It means the MLA and the MP will have little or no co-ordination. It means that the funds that pour in from the Centre will lie unused because the MLA will never endorse anything the MP wants. So vote Congress and ensure that your work is done," she urged.
On Day II of her campaign through the dusty and potholed tracks and trails of Gauriganj, Priyanka did not name the Congress's rivals but accused them of variously indulging in "casteist, communal and opportunistic" politics.
However, her street-corner stops and roadside interactions evoked mixed responses, arising from the feeling that although Rae Bareli (Sonia Gandhi's constituency) and Amethi were India's premier seats, they were "neglected" and "woefully short of infrastructure and social amenities".
But the thought of being stakeholders in "VVIP" seats and of Priyanka courting their votes were enough to assuage sentiments, mostly among women.
Dressed appropriately in a dark green Chettinad cotton sari on the occasion of the Prophet's birthday ' the villages and towns were awash in flags and buntings of the same colour ' the symbolism was sometimes not adequately reinforced.
The people of Pauna Buya, the village preceding Terhut, were annoyed because her cavalcade drove "cavalierly" through the main bazaar despite a large crowd that had waited all morning to "see and hear" her.
"There were 2,000 Muslims. But by not stopping, the Congress must have lost 10,000 votes," said Kamal Mian.
While his statement might sound like an expression of pique, conversations with Rae Bareli and Amethi voters over two days indicated that the Congress was in for the long haul. It had won seven of the 10 seats in 2007. This time, it seems to be in the fight in just three: Unchahar, Amethi and Gauriganj.
In the rest, it's mostly a fight between the Samajwadi Party and the BSP, with the BJP and the Peace Party rearing their heads occasionally.
Local Congress workers said they were "reasonably" certain of keeping Unchahar and Amethi (both have sitting Congress MLAs) while in Gauriganj, the Samajwadi and the BJP posed a "stiff challenge".
Would the fabled Priyanka "magic" work? The jury was out.
At Jugrajpur, a village close to Uskumu, where Priyanka spoke, farmers started off by saying that they would vote Congress to "save Rahulji's prestige".
Prod a little and the penny dropped: "We are having to pay three times more for a sack (50kg) of ammonia phosphate and urea. After spending all this money, we are forced to sell our paddy in the open market for Rs 7 a kg. The Centre's minimum statutory price is Rs 10. But even the government does not procure our yields because the officials say the grains are not fine enough.
"Both ways, the Congress government at the Centre has hit us badly. We will vote Mulayam Singh Yadav because his government was the most farmer-friendly," said Taluqedar Singh.
The good news for the Congress was every woman spoken to swore she would root for Priyanka. "She smiles sweetly and she also spoke of women's rights," said Purnima.
The women added they would not be swayed by their spouses' choice even if that briefly disrupted domestic peace.
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