The Heir Apparent for Congress (Nehru-Indira) Rahul Gandhi has been many novice experiments but nothing worked. Nothing seems to go right for the Congress's Chosen One. His backroom minders devise an attention-grabbing event for him and it becomes a PR disaster.
The recent so-called khat pey charcha, launched with great fanfare in UP's hinterland on Tuesday, ended up with no ‘charcha' and the newly-strung jute khats (cots) being lugged away by the couple of thousands who had been cajoled and coaxed into showing up. It was supposed to be Rahul Baba's direct interaction with farmers, but, led by Ghulam Nabi Azad, the leader of the Congress Opposition in the Rajya Sabha and in-charge of the party's campaign in UP, till the last minute, organisers were trying desperately to locate ‘genuine' farmers in the small audience.
A frantic search eventually produced a handful of them. But the larger crowd that had already assembled seemed to have its gaze fixed on the cots. The way the cots were looted within seconds after Rahul concluded his brief speech, was clearly indicative of the fact that the crowd that had gathered there, on their own or arranged by the party workers, were least interested in what the Congress vice-president had to say — his angry barbs against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP or the loan waiver and reducing electricity bills by half. They focussed on looting khats. The cots, all 2,000 of them, were freshly picked from the market.
The crowd probably reasoned, and reasoned right, that since there was no way the Congress was returning to power anytime soon, at least they can thank the Congress scion for the sturdy khats. They walked away with them. If the Congress failed to make their waking hours happy, at least a microscopic percentage in UP will have Rahul to thank for making their sleeping hours comfortable.
The difference between Modi's chai pey charcha and Rahul's khat pey charcha was that in the former, Modi, and not ‘chai', was the centre of attraction; in the second, it was the khats, and not Rahul, the sole attraction. Rahul Gandhi and his strategists should ponder over the possible ramifications of this khat loot on their month-long roadshow. Could this scene be repeated in all the Khat Sabhas that Rahul Gandhi is planning to hold? The Congress vice-president aims to cover 2,500-km across 39 districts and 233 Assembly constituencies in Uttar Pradesh. The bigger question is that if the party decides to do away with khats in Rahul's next sabha, will there be crowds?
