On last leg of Kisan yatra, Rahul Gandhi lets posters, stickers do the talking

The party’s best performance since it was thrown out of power in 1989 was 94 seats out of 425 that year. The worst, in the Assembly elections, was in 2007, when it got just 22 out of 403 seats. In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, only two of its candidates were elected — Rahul and Sonia Gandhi. Rahul has spent the last month traversing 3,438 kilometres across Uttar Pradesh for his ‘Kisan Yatra’. On Thursday afternoon, among those waiting for him at Modi Nagar, are several dozen anganwadi workers. “There are six-and-a-half lakh anganwadi workers in UP,” says one of them, adding that any party which promises to make their jobs permanent will get that sizable vote.

White vehicles with Congress flags reach the venue, followed by security cars, and finally Rahul’s bus. But the bus stops about 50 metres away from the red carpet, leading from the road to a small enclosure with the statue of a soldier. Rahul smiles, and gets down. The security personnel rush towards him as the crowd follows him across the highway, to “Jain Shikanji”, a lemonade shop. Rahul gets his lemonade, some chaat and walks back to the bus.

The bus then moves forward, towards the red carpet. Rahul gets out to garland the statue of the soldier. Sheila Dikshit, the party’s chief ministerial candidate, and Raj Babbar, its state unit chief, sit in the front row of the bus, eating chaat and waving to the crowd. The event takes about five minutes, after which Rahul is back in the bus. The party’s banners promise, “Kisaan ka karza maaf, bijlli ka bill half, samarthan moolya ka karo hisaab (waive farmers’ loans, slash electricity bills by half, and settle support price for farmers).” Beyond the banners, Rahul does not say anything. He just smiles.

The bus moves on, and the cavalcade grows along the way. The anganwadi workers remain behind the wooden barricade, hidden behind the flowing river of men. The motorcade crosses other “meeting points” on the way to Delhi, but it does not stop. At one spot, the organisers seem annoyed that Rahul didn’t even get down. And so the roadshow moves on, from Modi Nagar to Ghaziabad, East Delhi, and finally Central Delhi. At each pit stop, busloads of people are waiting for him. They hail their party and leader, and join him for the rally in Delhi.