With its top leadership coming together to lend a shoulder, the Bharat Jodo Yatra drew enthusiastic crowds on its second stretch in Haryana that began on Friday - despite the cold. The Yatra will spend five days in the state, before entering Punjab. The Congress, which has high hopes from Haryana, the state where it stopped the BJP short of a simple majority in 2019, would have been happy at the frequent talk of “badlaav (change)” along the route – an 18-20 km stretch from Sanoli Khurd village (on the Uttar Pradesh border) till Sanjay Chowk in Panipat on the Karnal-Delhi national highway. The turnout would also thrill the heart of Congress Legislature Party leader Bhupinder Hooda, the main organiser of the show, along with his aide and PCC president Udai Bhan, and son and Rajya Sabha MP Deepender Hooda. The crowds will give the veteran another edge over his bitter rivals in the state party. The posters accommodated some of them, including former PCC president Kumari Selja and ex-Cabinet minister Randeep Surjewala. The morning stretch of the Yatra largely covered the old Panipat town market, with its numerous juice, hardware, chemist, grocery, clothing etc stores, which remained shut for the duration of the march. Mahendra Malik, the owner of a grocery store, was among those who talked of change. “This BJP government’s MLAs and MPs are completely ineffective. The district administration does not listen to them. If officials are not listening to elected representatives, would they ever listen to the common man? Even today, people approach former Congress MLAs to get their work done. The BJP MLAs have just got luck on their side and encashed on Narendra Modi’s popularity to get to the Vidhan Sabha. On their own, they cannot pull any votes,” Malik said, adding that unemployment was among the biggest issues. “You walk down this road and you will find youngsters just loitering. No recruitments are happening. Where will our children go, once they get out of college or university?” Data recently released by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy put Haryana as the state with the highest unemployment rate in the country, of over 37.4 per cent. The Central government has contested the data. Ravinder Kumar, a contractor, named corruption as the biggest issue with the BJP government, while for Saurabh Kumar, who runs a hardware store, it was inflation. “It is not that corruption was not there earlier, but at least people’s work used to get done. Now, bribes exchange hands and yet people keep running from pillar to post. People of Haryana are desperately waiting for 2024 (Assembly polls),” Ravinder said. Saurabh said families like his had seen their monthly budgets go haywire. “Incomes have not increased in proportion to the price rise. We have been running the business for generations, but it is the toughest to run it in the current times. The government does not have any vision for small business holders,” he said. As bonfires were lit to fight the cold, people also seemed impressed by Rahul walking only in his T-shirt. Calling it commendable, shopkeeper Sham Sunder Kataria reasoned: “It is not that he cannot afford a sweater or a jacket, but he apparently wants to send the message to the common man that he identifies with the poor who do not have woollens to fight the cold.” For Om Prakash, another shopkeeper, Rahul's walk from Kanyakumari to Kashmir gave the message of a vibrant Opposition. “This is necessary to ensure that the ruling party does not take any arbitrary decisions.” An Additional Labour Commissioner from Gohana in Sonipat drove to Panipat to just catch a glimpse of Rahul, and placed a video call to friends to share the moment with them. “I took leave from office, came from Chandigarh only to watch this man who has shown exemplary courage to take on the ruling party. He is not seeking votes in any of his public speeches. He is only raising people’s voice against rising inflation, unemployment and the religion and caste-divide,” the official said, not wanting to be identified. The BJP supporters on the road acknowledged this “effort” by Rahul, but wondered if it was “too little and too late for him to shun his image of a not-so-popular politician in comparison to the huge popularity of Modi”. That remains the million-dollar question.
