Whose agitation?

Rahul Gandhi kept a two-year-old date with the inhabitants of Orissas Niyamgiri hills on Thursday. In what became a highly charged visit to Lanjigarh,site of Vedantas controversial refinery,he set out the timeline at a Congress-organised rally for tribal rights: This is your victory. You saved your own land. Two years ago you had come to me saying the Niyamgiri hill is your god. I told you I would be your sipahi soldier in Delhi. I am happy that I have helped you in whatever way I could. He did not get into details of Vedantas now cancelled bauxite mining project. The message was delivered in a disarming manner now associated with Rahul Gandhi sentences scrubbed down to remove the stock,and therefore false-sounding,words from the rallyists phrasebook; a spontaneous connect with those gathered without fawning intermediaries. But the Niyamgiri visit does mark a change in his way of political mobilisation.

Rahul Gandhi is perhaps the most powerful general secretary in the Congresss history. He is powerful in part for being seen to be his partys future. As he has criss-crossed the country,connecting with the aam aadmi,it has been seen to be an effort at including various constituencies in a forward-looking way. So he has flummoxed his political opponents by casually taking a local train in Mumbai,having a meal in a Dalit household,chatting with university students how do they counter the charisma of a man unhurriedly telling folks theres a future to be built? Now,at Lanjigarh in Kalahandi district he has taken responsibility for winging a government action a certain way if not for the actual decision by the Union environment ministry against the bauxite project,at least for advocating a certain point of view. The decision came two days before Rahul Gandhi visited Orissa,when preparations for the visit had already been made.

The government is the right authority to take a call on the legitimacy of the bauxite project. But the message that the Congresss mobilisation in opposition-ruled states is backed by the Centres actions has unsettling implications. Also,at Lanjigarh,the Congress appears to be unbundling the aam aadmi on a case-by-case basis. This carries the danger of it then having to balance different constituencies with competing agendas.