Rahul does not grasp that the problem with Amethi is that it’s no longer the dot of a village that the Gandhis put on the map. Now that it’s on the map, Amethi wants more from its MP

That missing food park is the least of Amethi’s problems.

What Rahul Gandhi does not understand is that the main thing missing for years in Amethi has been its celebrated MP.

Rahul Gandhi seems to have a bit of the Amit Shah problem. Shah famously had a little trouble distinguishing between badla (revenge) and badlav (change) on the campaign trail. Rahul does not realize that while he complains that the BJP is playing the politics of “badla” or revenge in Amethi, his constituents have been complaining for years that their VVIP MP has not brought enough badlav (change) to his home turf.

That was very apparent on the streets of Amethi during the last election. Rahul Gandhi won it but not before Smriti Irani and Kumar Vishwas gave him a good scare. It forced both Gandhi siblings to show up for a rose-petal shower motorcade to remind Amethi that the Gandhis still cared.

It’s not that ordinary Amethi-wallahs hate Rahul. The well of generational affection has not dried up at all. “He’s personally a good man but all he can do is wave,” complained Pawan Chaurasia who runs a suiting-shirting store in Gauriganj. Chaurasia once voted for Rahul. Last year he voted for Smriti Irani. Even those who voted for Rahul did so out of habit rather than enthusiasm. People do not understand what Amethi was like when they say there has been no development said Shabnam Bano. People like Bano blame middlemen because they mislead the “big netas”. “Beta, Rahul Gandhi cannot lose,” 90-year-old Dhruvnarayan Tripathi in Gauriganj told me as he rested in the shade after casting his vote. “That is a matter of Amethi’s izzat. Just because of that he will get 50 percent of the vote.”

What Rahul does not get is that it’s never been about the food park. There’s enough Gandhi largesse scattered around Amethi. The Sanjay Gandhi Hospital, the Indira Gandhi School of Nursing, the good works of the Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust do not mean much if the citizen do not feel its direct benefits.

Mohammad Ali, a young man on the streets of Amethi complained the Sanjay Gandhi hospital did not even have dog bite medicine. Chaurasiya said he was always paranoid that if anything happened to his child, the nearest good trauma centre was in Lucknow 130 km away. Rahul Gandhi always talks about the IIIT at Teekarmafi aka the Rajiv Gandhi Institution of Information Technology. During his election campaign he even addressed a campaign rally there. “But all the students are from outside,” said Sandeep Soni, an M.Com student. “We are padhey-likhey and sitting around doing nothing. There’s a gun factory. I don’t think they even have a chaprasi from Amethi.” Likewise the petroleum institute gifted by Rahul Gandhi. The contractors came from outside as did the machinery. Amethi residents were at best labour. The Usha Steel and Samrat Bicycle factories have long given up the ghost.

Rahul claims the food park would have benefited the farmers of Amethi because farmers from 10 districts could directly send their produce to it. But Amethi’s experience with Rahul’s plans is that they get the buildings and the nameplates but not the benefits.

Rahul does not grasp that the problem with Amethi is that it’s no longer the dot of a village that the Gandhis put on the map. Now that it’s on the map, Amethi wants more from its MP. “Look at how the chief minister’s constituency is sparkling,” said Vivek Kumar, an LIC agent. “And we are the constituency of the most powerful man in Congress, a would-be Prime Minister and look at the road leading to this booth.”

It embarrasses Amethi that they are a VVIP constituency without a decent hotel for anyone to stay in. It embarrasses them that they cannot think of an air-conditioned store in their city. Forget food park, it frustrates youngsters in Amethi that they don’t have a nice park where they can go out on a date. “There’s no point of having a girlfriend in Amethi. What’s there to do?” was about the most poignant and stinging comment I heard on the campaign trail in Amethi.

At his rally in Teekarmafi, Rahul assured a young girl who had lost her hand in a threshing accident that he would help her. The girl's family was grateful. But Rahul does not realize that Amethi is not hungering for charity from its absentee landlord. The language he is used to is about free operations and medicines and pension schemes. What young voters in Amethi want is opportunity. “This is shikshit berozgaari (educated unemployment)” said Rakesh Jaiswal. “That really hurts.”

Rahul Gandhi cannot understand that frustration because it’s entirely alien to him. He can understand the plight of the absolute have-nots because it’s too naked, too obvious. And he obviously understands the entitlement of the elite. Both are part and parcel of a feudal society. But the frustration of the have-some-but-not-enough eludes him completely.

“The food park has been snatched from us as per a well-planned conspiracy,” says Amethi’s born-again MP. Food processing minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal says Rahul “is spreading falsehood” and the food park was actually basically a front for a power plant. That’s all power play in Amethi made more ironic by its chronic power cuts. If the per capita income in Amethi is one of the lowest in Uttar Pradesh that’s not because of a food park that got cancelled in 2015. When Rahul Gandhi says a food park would have changed the face of Amethi, he does not realize that it begs an obvious question. After ten years as its MP, years during which his party was in power in Delhi, why does changing the face of Amethi even depend on one food park in 2015?