Rahul Going Rural
Posted : April 17, 2008 at 8:51 pm [IST]
I am not a fan of Gandhi family. I mean Indira Gandhi family. Somehow Rahul has failed to impress me. I didn’t find anything different and unique in him or his action. All the time I thought he could have taken up the task of building up his own and his mother’s constituencies in UP that are basically rural and present it as models for other MPs. He would have stayed in different villages there building up their morale to improve productivity of farming, household enterprises, and creating PURA. With all the resources available to him as the member of the royal family and ruling party, he could have done and impressed upon persons like me.
However, I have started liking some of his recent rural adventures and travels by road. As reported, Rahul Gandhi took the entire Jhansi administration by surprise when he suddenly visited Ghishouli village in Babina block of Jhansi district on his way to Madhya Pradesh by road. Rahul went straight to the house of Ram Prakash Ahirwar and stayed with him and his family for more than an hour.
I only wish Rahul not to make his Dalit preference so much visible that others get disenchanted or annoyed. Rahul made news with his overnight stay in a dalit’s house in Sultanpur recently. He went to Etawah from Delhi to sympathize with a dalit family. As I read, he also ditched his security to go to a naxal village in Orissa too and became controversial.
Latest is his dinner and overnight stay in MP. As reported, after taking food prepared by Bhawani Saur, a Gond widow of Baissa village in Tikamgarh, MP, Rahul Gandhi sat speaking to tribals about the employment guarantee scheme at the village choupal. Sachin Pilot and Uttar Pradesh PCC chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi were with Rahul. After the conversation, Rahul slept on a charpoy in the house of another tribal, Khuman Rajak and the group drove off early morning. However, the report mentioned of a new bed but didn’t mention if a mosquito net was used.
I wish these visits were not only political gimmicks and prompted by some professional brand builders, but to get a real feel of the lives of villagers and their problems from nearer quarter. Will he request or make mandatory for all his MPs and state legislators or even bureaucrats to spend some nights in villages of their constituencies regularly? It must be with an intention to make the public figures accessible to general public. It will also help them to understand and appreciate the actual rural problems more realistically.
I love to travel by road and keep on asking friends to travel by road. It will certainly improve the road and facilities along road if the politicians and bureaucrats who matter start traveling by road.
I wish Rahul a success and rural India a real sympathizer.
- Indra
Category: Rural development |
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