Congress builds hope on 47 lakh loan waiver notes and nostalgia

In Unnao's Pachodda village, Ganeshi Lal is keeping a small paper very carefully. It is the counterfoil of his 'Kisan Mangpatra' that Rahul Gandhi filled in his own hand when he had a meal at his house last week - specifying the Rs 1.75 Lakh bank loan that Lal took for growing roses on his 3-bighas of land but rains spoilt it all. "Rahul Ji ne kaha ki unki Sarkar aayi to 10 din main sab karz maaf. Slip ko sambhal ke rakha hai," Lal smiles.
The Congress big push in UP rests mainly on this - the party has already collected 47 lakh such Mangpatras during Rahul's Yatra from Deoria to Lucknow so far, aiming to target 2 Cr households in all hoping that farmers remember the loan waiver promise in 2017 and vote for the party. Deep in Bundelkhand where farmer suicides due to loans is an epidemic, in villages in Banda and Chitrakoot, farmers do speak of Congress workers coming to them to fill the Mangpatras. "Someone called me on the phone later to confirm what I had filled as my loan details," Dhani Ram in a Banda village told ET. A Congress Call centre sends a recorded message of Rahul to all such farmers. There are a few instances of farmers even trying to bribe to get a Mangatra, locals concede.

But it is a very big mountain to climb. Congress has just 3 seats in entire Bundelkhand despite Rahul's extensive engagement with the area since his Bhatta Parsaul days when he started taking up farmer issues. In Allahabad district, which is the ancestral ground of Congress, the party holds just one of the 10 MLA seats - both the MP seats here are with the BJP. Last Congress MPs from Allahabad and Phoolpur were in 1984 - Amitabh Bachchan from the former seat while Phoolpur which once had Jawaharlal Nehru as its MP now has the state BJP president Keshav Maurya as its representative.

"Swaraj Bhawan and Anand Bhawan here are symbols of Congress rich and glorious history in Allahabad. All started here - Indira Gandhi was born in Swaraj Bhawan...but no one seems to remember Congress now here," a senior employee at the Swaraj Bhawan reminisces. Rahul stayed a night at Swaraj Bhawan this time during the Yatra. But he made it a point that no political event of the Yatra happened inside or around the grand old building. Sonia Gandhi stayed here in a quiet visit in March - to personally oversee the extensive renovation work in the first Congress headquarters.

Some of Rahul's biggest road shows in the Yatra so far have been in Allahabad and Kanpur cities. No one however understands the challenge here more than the party's three-time MP from Kanpur and former union minister, Sriprakash Jaiswal. "The effort being put in by Rahul is commendable and deserves praise. The Yatra is helping in a way that people are at least considering the Congress as an alternative. Whether it will bring us seats, only time will tell," Jaiswal says. He puts in perspective the challenge: Congress holds just one out of the 10 MLA seats in Kanpur City and Kanpur Dehat.

Locals still allude to Jaiswal as their MP - there was a big group at his residence on Sunday to wish him on his birthday when ET met him. "Our MP Murli Manohar Joshi is never to be seen in Kanpur. But Jaiswal never even ignores a birthday event invite," a local shopkeeper Anjani Singh says. "Kanpur Ki log Kehte hain Ki unhe lagta tha ki Modi ji Murli Manohar Joshi ko Delhi ke Shastri Bhawan mein bithayange yan Udyog Bhawan mean bithyange...par unhe to Modi ne Kop Bhawan mein bitha diya," a senior Congress functionary chuckles, on Joshi being placed in the BJP's Margdarshak mandal after made to make way for Modi to contest from Varanasi in 2014. "I did not lose to Joshi..I lost to Modi's tsunami in UP," Jaiswal says.


Congress hopes instances such as Kanpur wean away voters from BJP to Congress in urban centres. "I wonder why Rahul attacked Modi so much in Allahabad...yeh to state ka election hai...and Modi is still popular, especially among us, the youth," says Ruchi Sahu, echoing the view of her group of friends having a meal at Allahabad's Civil Lines. Congress leaders say they feel gains to BJP from 47 seats it has presently would harm Congress chances of exceeding its tally from 28 seats while SP is "on a decline". That explains Rahul's repeated utterances on the PM for never clicking selfies with farmers or lamenting about bad roads and power situation to attack both the BJP and the SP.

"Rahul Ki Sun li...ab Akhilesh bhi Yatra nikalenege...unki bhi sunenge," Ramjeevan Lal, a farmer in Chitrakoot's Badausa village told ET, reflecting a dominant view that the UP farmer is still to make up its mind. At nearby Kamathnath Temple which Rahul had visited, the Chief Mahant, Ram Swarup Charya says he blessed Rahul to become the Prime Minister. "I told him he did well by going to Ayodhya. I told him he will now become PM," Charya says. Congress would be hoping the blessing counts first in 2017.