The poor state of Amethi and Rae Bareli tell a different story altogether.

During the heat of electioneering in Uttar Pradesh last year Rahul Gandhi tore a piece of paper claiming that Samajwadi Party manifesto could deserve only this kind of treatment. He always looked angry and also asked people to reflect their anger. It looked as if he was leading some kind of mass movement, not leading a poll campaign of a party that was ruling at the centre for the last two terms. He worked hard in the run up to the polls.

He also worked hard when he went on a three-day 'Paidal Yatra' from Bhatta Parsaul to Aligarh to protest against Mayawati’s land acquisition policy and the consequent police excesses. These were also the occasions when the expectations of local Congress workers were on a high, naturally so. They expected to get heard by their supreme leader who in turn would open up the systems and build the structures that he so passionately speaks of. But like he told industry captains that they could keep on expecting from prime minister to solve their problems, which Manmohan Singh could not, those Congress workers kept infinitely expecting from Rahul but hardly ever got a chance to see their humble hopes turn into reality.

During his two-pronged outings in his home state he would be surrounded by his coterie and personal favourites. Talk to any local Congressman to areas he visited, he would say that Rahul could create right atmospherics but did not practice what he preached. Tickets were mostly given to Samajwadi and Bahujan Samaj Party rebels, discards or paratroopers from elsewhere. The ordinary Congress workers and leaders were left to rue and indulge in idle debates, invariably ending up blaming Rahul for creating such situation. It was the candidates of whatever personal worth not Congress party, which contested there.

A drive down to Amethi and Rae Bareli, the twin constituencies held by Gandhi family and so glamourised to the outside world, was kind of 'Sach Ka Samna'. Amethi is still very backward, Rae Bareli is better off what with some old industries set up by Indira Gandhi and some new one likes the NIFT on the outskirts. The Congress drew a blank in Rae Bareli despite Sonia Gandhi and Priyanka staying there for days together and in Amethi Congress could win only two of five assembly constituencies. Even the Congress workers in the two constituencies felt too distant from the party.

The village Pradhans, of whose empowerment Rahul kept referring to at the CII meet, too had their share of grudges.

One name, Kishorilal Sharma, a Gandhi family appointed custodian for Amethi-Rae Bareli, had become almost a hate symbol. He would boss over all MLAs, district party presidents, ticket aspirants and anyone who would have anything to do with the Congress or want to have anything done through Congress connections. Pradhans, though elected as independents as no party symbol is used in Panchayat elections, have their own party affiliations and in some areas are the virtual neo-zamindars.

It was perhaps because of Rahul’s own frustrating experience in his constituency where he would be constantly asked and his family held responsible for poor road and sanitation connectivity and conditions that he says why should he as an MP do the work of a Pradhan. Why should he be held responsible for follies of Pradhan? He, of course, calls that empowerment of grassroots and voice to people.

Consider what Rahul said about importance of roads at CII: "It is our duty to provide India with the physical infrastructure to enable this unprecedented movement of people and ideas. This infrastructure needs to connect India - it needs to connect Indian villages, it needs to connect Indian cities, and it needs to connect India to the rest of the world. We have to provide the roads on which our dreams are paved. And these roads can’t have potholes. They can’t breakdown in six months. They have to be big roads, because they are going to carry strong people, they are going to carry strong forces."

A drive on Amethi-Rae Bareli road had made this correspondent realize the pain a potholed road could cause. There are two roads that connects Amethi to the outer world, one via Musaphirkhana and the other through Munshiganj, Jais, Gauriganj, and traveling through both the roads made one wonder how could this be the road to connect the place, which has the honour of representing Congress’s as also nation’s past, present and future. A 'strategy consultant' in Rahul Gandhi, as official Lok Sabha website lists his profession, would not like to be blamed for sundry issues when he is busy on his planning to turn his singular dream, as he said at CII giving "voice to people" into reality.

The National Highway Authority has taken over road projects around the twin Amethi and Rae Bareli constituencies since assembly elections and Kishorilal too has been sidelined.

Though Rahul Gandhi claimed that he was not a hard-nosed politician, he too thinks that the public had short memories and can be fooled around. Consider this "Over the last couple of years, you have done a tremendous job. The image of India has changed. I went to University in 1991, and I remember, nobody thought of India I remember conversations where people would laugh and say, Do you have elephants on the road? Nobody is saying that today."

It was in 1991 that his father Rajeev Gandhi was assassinated but he wanted people to conveniently forgot that till 1989, only two years back India was ruled (barring three and half years of aberrations of Lal Bahadur Shastri and Morarji Desai Prime Ministership) India was ruled by the “DNA” chain of people or “accident of fate” that he talked about his family lineage in another context. India’s reputation in the world changed largely because it realized its potential after IT revolution took place.

He would like to disassociate himself and not to be accountable for any of the follies of the UPA's nine-year rule. He would still be reluctant to commit to lead the Congress to next elections or shoulder a particular responsibility in the government, or answer a straight to a question reflected yesterday, not be a hard-nosed politician but be a reformer on a mission to give voice to people. Anna Hazare thought he was doing the same by keeping away from politics. His principal rival, a hard-nosed Narendra Modi has already made his intentions clear that he would like to put his ideas into practice from New Delhi.