Everyman, everywhere: Rahul Gandhi now drops in at Delhi sabzi mandi

His aides said Rahul, who returned to Delhi Saturday night after week-long treatment at a Kerala centre for a niggle in the knee, decided to drop in after seeing a recent viral video of a hapless vegetable vendor in tears about rising prices.

“RG (as those close to him call Rahul) said let’s go to Azadpur. A decision was taken on Monday night,” an insider said.

The Azadpur visit may have been a little more sudden than his other “apolitical” outings – to a bike mechanic shop in Karol Bagh, as pillion rider on a delivery agent’s motorcycle in Karnataka, to a paddy field in Haryana’s Sonipat to talk to farmers, to a Delhi University hostel, to Delhi’s Mukherjee Nagar to meet civil service aspirants, a ride with truck drivers in Punjab, and a repeat one in the US, travelling on the truck of an Indian from Washington to New York.

Mocked by rivals, particularly the BJP, as a privileged dynast removed from the daily grind of most Indians, Rahul has tried several reinventions of his image over his political career. The restless, aggressive young man who tore into an ordinance passed by his own government is a thing of the past. This time the emphasis is on projecting Rahul as an everyman – as much to put Opposition parties seeking a partnership with the Congress at ease, as to juxtapose him as a contrast to the larger-than-life Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Congress leader was making the latest of his sudden and “impromptu” visits, this time to one of the Capital’s biggest sabzi mandis. (FB/ Rahul Gandhi)

The biggest move was ensuring last year that the Congress presidentship moved after more than 20 years to a non-Gandhi. Rahul put further distance between himself and the whole process by ensuring he was away from Delhi on a Bharat Jodo Yatra as the election to the post took place.

Mallikarjun Kharge may not have been the family’s first choice, but he has proved an inspired one, holding his own against the BJP and standing taller after the Karnataka win.

The second phase of Rahul’s evolution was on display during the Bharat Jodo Yatra. While interspersed with a few rallies, the Yatra’s main focus was personal interactions of Rahul with a cross-section of people, duly captured by professional videographers and photographers from external agencies.

Rahul’s disqualification as an MP soon after the Yatra ended was initially seen as a setback, as it meant he could not be in Parliament and potentially not contest the 2024 polls. However, the Congress has tried to turn that into an advantage with Rahul’s visits now carrying the aura of a leader acting out of his convictions and not beholden to elections.

An aide said there was one common theme to his seemingly disparate meetings. “He is visiting those who are toiling hard day and night. They are aspirational, but they are struggling.”

This also fits into Rahul’s broader attack against the Modi government of a widening chasm between the rich and the poor under his government, and against the PM of “favouring the rich”.

जननायक राहुल गांधी जी आज दिल्ली की आजादपुर मंडी में सब्जी और फल विक्रेताओं से मिले।

राहुल जी ने उनकी समस्याओं को जाना और समझा।

भारत जोड़ो यात्रा जारी है… 🇮🇳 pic.twitter.com/g0PuMD3tEi

— Congress (@INCIndia) August 1, 2023

Another common feature of these interactions is that Rahul has very few “political people” around him, and does not use the party network and machinery. Often, the local MLA or pradhan comes to know after he is already at the spot.

The third aspect is the surprise element. If at Azadpur, there was no intimation at all, the mechanics he met in Karol Bagh were informed with hours to go. About Azadpur, an aide said: “We could not have told anyone… It is, after all, a sprawling mandi.”

Denying that apprehension regarding an unpleasant experience if the audience was better prepared was a reason, a Congress leader said: “While you can never prepare an audience during such visits, Rahul has never faced any hostility during such outings.”

The Azadpur visit of Rahul lasted around two hours, with the Congress leader meeting pushcart vendors, middlemen, workers, APMC labourers, wholesale traders and buyers, as well as visiting the tomato auction mandi. He also had tea with the workers. Aides said Rahul wanted to spend more time but a huge crowd gathered, forcing him to cut short his visit.

As to what the people he met told him, a functionary said: “Most people told RG they have no options left but hard labour.”

One leader called these brief outings a follow-up to the Bharat Jodo Yatra. “He had to build on the Yatra brand and continue his outreach in some way… the Yatra created a lot of impact and visibility.” The focus since has been on meetings with a personal touch, with Rahul going to the workplace of different sections of society, a leader said. “People are more at ease, relaxed and candid in their own space.”

An aide said: “Nothing is pre-rehearsed. He travelled on a truck for seven hours. He spent three hours with the paddy farmers. He spent four hours at the (Karol Bagh) garage. Once you are ready to spend that much time, you will get footage, because people get comfortable after some time. People speak on a variety of things. So many things come up.”

Going forward, the plan is for Rahul to keep meeting those “struggling to make both ends meet, and not benefiting from the so-called economic development”, a leader said, listing artisans, small shopkeepers, small-scale industry owners. Congress leaders argue that hardly 10% of the population has benefited from the Modi government’s economic model.

Rahul reportedly had planned an interaction for Bengaluru too when he was there for the Opposition meeting earlier this month. But former Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy’s sudden demise forced him to shelve the plan.

Closer to the 2024 elections, Rahul is expected to take out another Bharat Jodo Yatra.

The Azadpur visit of Rahul lasted around two hours, with the Congress leader meeting pushcart vendors, middlemen, workers, APMC labourers, wholesale traders and buyers, as well as visiting the tomato auction mandi. (FB/ Rahul Gandhi)

No other leader is devoting so much time for these kinds of meetings, close associates point out.

Apart from the refurbishing of his image, Rahul’s aides say the visits give the Congress leader a platform to put across his message. The Congress has long accused mainstream media of being biased against Rahul and blocking him out, especially after Modi’s rise, and these videos help him build a narrative by directly connecting with the masses, a leader said.

For inputs, Rahul turns to a variety of sources. There is a content team, a ground team and research team, apart from the video team. They do the research and discuss the possible engagements he can have. Since March 2022, Rahul’s social media platforms have been run as a separate entity, delinked from the party’s social media wing.

Party leaders cite the popularity of Rahul’s YouTube channel as a sign of the success of their strategy. While the average viewership of the channel was 1 crore a week between January and August 2022, post Bharat Jodo Yatra, this rose to 12 crore a week between September 2022 and January 2023. Since February to June, this has gone further up to 20 crore on an average, a source said.

There has been a steady rise in weekly subscribers gained by the channel as well, from 99,000 to 8.8 lakh. His YouTube channel had about 5.5 lakh subscribers before the Yatra; it is up to 25.7 lakh now.