What is the Amethi model of ‘development’, or rather the complete lack of it? A little bit of delving back into recent history here would help. Sonia Gandhi represented this constituency from 1999–2004 as an MP and from 2004 till date, it has been Rahul Gandhi, Sonia’s son, who has been the MP of this constituency. The last Lok Sabha election was held in 2014, and the next one in 2019. As of 2014, Amethi has been represented by four members of the Nehru-Gandhi family since 1980, for 34 long years, with the mother son duo of Sonia and Rahul, representing it since 1991, for over two decades. In 2019, Rahul would have completed a good 15 years as the MP of Amethi. Hence, it is only fair to ask Rahul and Sonia, what exactly is the Amethi model?
In the 1980s, Amethi was as backward or at par with many districts in other states. However, over almost the last four odd decades, many constituencies in states like, say, Gujarat for instance, have witnessed substantial development, be it the likes of Surat, Bardoli and Valsad under successive BJP-led governments, or Indore, under the erstwhile Shivraj Singh Chouhan government, with flourishing business centres, good infrastructure, roads, hospitals and round-the-clock electricity. One should visit Shimoga town in the heart of Karnataka to understand how BS Yedyuruppa, the BJP heavyweight transformed the area, reflecting what public representatives can do to a district if they really get down to business in terms of living upto the faith reposed in them by the common citizenry. But alas, poor Amethi, which has been represented almost continuously by the Nehru-Gandhis for over thirty years, finds itself as neglected and miserable as it was in the 1980s. Out of the 70 plus years in post independent India, Congress ruled the state of Uttar Pradesh for about 34 years. It was also in power at the centre during most of these years. Hence, Rahul and Sonia cannot even hide under the lame pretext of the central government stalling projects in Uttar Pradesh or Amethi.
The same is true for Raebareli, which has been in the callous hands of the Gandhi family since 1951, when Feroze Gandhi became its first MP. Except on a few occasions, when Raj Narain of the Janata Party defeated Indira Gandhi in 1977 and later in 1996 and 1998, when Ashok Singh of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won from the constituency, Raebareli has always been with the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty.
Before elaborating further on the failed Amethi model, some data that was published in “Peoples Democracy”, a CPI (M) weekly mouthpiece, in September 2010, showcases that Raebareli-Amethi fared worse than even Purulia, which, along with Bankura, have been historically called the two most underdeveloped regions of West Bengal. For instance, people below the poverty line in Purulia in West Bengal stood at 31 per cent, but in Raebareli and Amethi it was an embarrassing 54 per cent. Again, families with access to electricity in Purulia were at 29 per cent but, in Raebareli-Amethi it was a mere 14 per cent. Per capita expenditure in Purulia was a lowly Rs. 461 and in Raebareli-Amethi, an even lower at Rs. 385. The number of vaccinated children in Purulia stood at 84 per cent but, in Raebareli-Amethi it was a horrifying 16 per cent only.
Neo-natal deaths in Purulia were 46 per 1000 and in Raebareli-Amethi, that number was an unacceptable 83 per 1000. Also, fatality below five years stood at 89 per 1000 in Purulia and in Rae Bareli-Amethi, it was 160, showing that not only were people in the VIP Raebareli-Amethi constituencies bereft of basic amenities but equally, overall life expectancy and quality of life cut a sorry state of affairs, with most people living in abject misery.
What a pity that the mother-son duo who represent Raebareli and Amethi were mute spectators as these two VVIP constituencies hurtled into a dark abyss for over two decades. Around 36 villages in Amethi suffer from the problem of khaara paani (saline water) and crores allotted for digging ponds to resolve something as basic as the availability of sufficient drinking water, have either never been utilized productively or cornered by spurious elements, in a stark reminder of how Rahul Gandhi is not taken seriously even by the administrative officials of his own constituency. Rahul, on the other hand, blind to ground realities, conveniently claims credit for the HAL and the BHEL units in Amethi, whereas the former was set up in 1982 and the latter in 1983, and Rahul Gandhi’s contribution to both these projects was an absolute zero, much like his contribution to the Indo-gulf fertilizer plant set up in 1998 in Amethi, was zilch.
Again, Rahul Gandhi’s lies on the Rail Neer plant in Tikaria in Amethi have been correctly punctured by the BJP. While the Gandhi scion and the Congress staked false claims, the hard truth is the Rail Neer plant with a capacity to churn out 72,000 bottles of water per day was commissioned not in 2014, but, by the IRCTC, an arm of the Indian Railways, in 2015, under the aegis of the Narendra Modi-led government.
It is not merely the apathy of the mother-son duo that made a mockery of the democratic ethos of India that is unacceptable, there have been other unanswered questions too, which Sonia and Rahul have never come clean on. For example, in 1983, 65 acres of land belonging to farmers was acquired in Kauhar village of Amethi and given to Samrat Bicycles to set up a manufacturing plant. However, the company did not commence work and soon closed down. To repay the loan, it auctioned the land allotted by Uttar Pradesh State Industrial Development Corporation (UPSIDC). It has been alleged that later, the highly valuable 65 acres of farmers’ land, was summarily “transferred or sold” to the Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust by UPSIDC, for a mere Rs. 10 crores, flouting standard procedures.
While the allegedly arbitrary manner in which Samrat Bicycles closed down and government land was thereafter doled out to the Rajiv Gandhi Trust has been a matter of public debate in Amethi, Rahul Gandhi on his part has been unflappable, putting up a facade of false bravado. Not only Samrat Bicycles,but reportedly, dozens of small and medium-sized industries closed down under suspicious circumstances or became dysfunctional after the death of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, with most projects which had been started, being put on hold. Large tracts of land that were taken from the farmers of Amethi either illegally, or in the guise of providing them sustainable jobs and setting up viable industrial units, were reportedly fraudulently “sold” off to cronies of the Gandhis’ at ridiculously cheap rates after these industries became sick, and in the entire process, farmers were left high and dry, with no land, no jobs, no income and, nothing to fall back upon.
Farmers and inmates of Parsauli village in Amethi vented out their anger and frustration against Rahul, with the entire village deciding not to vote in the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, 2017, in which, incidentally, the Congress was reduced to an embarrassing 7 seats only, in an assembly of 403 seats, but that still did not wake up the Gandhis from their inertia.
The Amethi model of ‘development’ is actually an oxymoron, and one that, sadly, is all about lack of political will, alienation with no sense of belonging, ineptitude, corruption, and most importantly, about the refusal to even be seized of the magnitude of the misery, which is so typical of insensitive and careless dynasts, who want power, only to acquire more power, and to acquire more wealth, and propitiate other like-minded sycophants and dynasts in their coterie.
Contrast Rahul’s apathy for his constituency, with the courage of conviction and farsightedness of PM Narendra Modi, who has transformed Varanasi, commissioning two highways of a total of 34 kms, to improve connectivity and hasten the pace of development, in November 2018, with the 16.55 km Varanasi Ring Road Phase-I, completed at a cost of Rs. 759.36 crore, while the work of four-laning and construction of 17.25 km Babatput-Varanasi road on NH-56 has been completed at a cost Rs. 812.59 crore. The Babatpur Airport highway will link Varanasi to the airport and extend further to Jaunpur, Sultanpur, and Lucknow. With a flyover at Harhua and Road Over Bridge (ROB) at Tarna, the road will reduce the travel time from Varanasi to the airport and will prove a big relief to the residents, tourists and other visitors.
The Ring Road, with two ROBs and a flyover, will provide a way for traffic on NH 56 (Lucknow-Varanasi), NH 233 (Azamgarh-Varanasi), and NH 29 (Gorakhpur-Varanasi), and Ayodhya Varanasi highways to avoid traffic within the confines of Varanasi city, thereby reducing traffic congestion in the city. These projects will also provide employment opportunities and the development of small and medium industries in the area.
As of December 2018, there were 2833 km of National Highway projects costing Rs. 63,885 crore underway, to link Varanasi to other places in eastern Uttar Pradesh. That PM Modi also dedicated the newly constructed Multi Modal Terminal on River Ganga to the nation, it is the first of the four multi-modal terminals being constructed on NW-I (River Ganga) as part of the World Bankaided Jal Marg Vikas project of the Inland Waterways Authority of India, and is a ringing endorsement of how Modi’s constituency, Varanasi, hitherto neglected for decades, has received not merely a cosmetic face-lift but a complete make-over, that has unleashed a development boom of a kind never witnessed before in this holy city of Kashi.
Coming back to Amethi,not just health, even the education system in Amethi has been in tatters, with Rahul Gandhi blissfully incompetent as ever. A startling revelation, an HRD Ministry report on school education in Uttar Pradesh prepared by the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) in 2016, claimed that Amethi is the most backward region in eastern Uttar Pradesh, particularly in the school education system. With poor transportation, residents of Amethi face many difficulties, and hence, even today, instead of going to school or college, “girls in this area take care of domestic animals, do agricultural related work and work as labour in fields,” said the report, quoting the residents of Amethi.
The 2016 NIOS report exposes the hypocrisy of Rahul Gandhi who espouses the cause of women empowerment ad nauseam, but, in his own constituency in Amethi, most young girls do not even get to go to school simply because there are no proper roads, routine amenities are a far cry, and even basics like drinking water and access to sanitation are a distant dream for many. While the Modi dispensation never accorded a step-fatherly treatment to Raebareli-Amethi, and among other things, provided access to basic amenities including electricity, and even started work on a Sainik School and Kendriya Vidyalaya, the MP from Amethi, Rahul Gandhi, has no excuses and no business shirking away from his fiduciary duties to his constituency, by virtue of being its duly elected representative.
While Rahul Gandhi continued spreading misinformation, Narendra Modi, being the “Karmayogi” that he is, took the significant decision to manufacture the AK-203, which is the modernised version of AK-47 assault rifles, in collaboration with Russia, at the Ordnance Factory at Korwa, in Amethi. This joint venture will give a huge boost to the Uttar Pradesh Defence Industrial Corridor (UPDIC) project. Talking of Rahul Gandhi, for all his false bravado and rhetoric mixed with a heady cocktail of lies and ignorance on “Rafale”, the fact is, the apex court in India has clearly and unequivocally stated that there was no “commercial favouritism” in the Rafale deal.
The moot point to be noted here is, can India afford to take chances and give an opportunity to lead to a dynast, who has not only failed miserably in discharging his duties as a Member of Parliament, but more importantly, has no sense of responsibility or sobriety, in matters pertaining to national security? The answer is a vehement No! Rahul Gandhi had not one, not two, not three, but in 2019, he would have completed 15 long years as the MP from Amethi. If in 15 years, he could not even give pucca roads to his constituents, it should be the end of the road in terms of his political career. Amethi has lost patience, and for good reason. Hopefully, that impatience will be well harnessed to ensure that the dynast is discarded in 2019, so that Amethi gets to take a shot at good governance, something that Modinomics exemplifies, in more ways than one.