That hot and humid night, Rahul slept in the front room, Kapilas and family occupied the next room.
Kapilas Mallik won’t forget that warm evening of March 9, 2008. The Khond tribe’s Tamana village had a strange visitor. In sparkling white, Indian politics’ most powerful youngster, Rahul Gandhi, was on a quiet discovery of “real India”.
“He ate with us, and then served us,” recalls Mallik, 47, as a grin lights up his face.
His house and the entire village are beneficiaries of an effective NGO intervention. It was the reputation of Gram Vikas, which has received funding form Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, that brought Rahul to the clean, well-laid-out village.
That hot and humid night, Rahul slept in the front room, Kapilas and family occupied the next room. Outside, SPG personnel stood vigil. Local police were stumped by Rahul’s decision to stay a night in a tribal village. Next morning, he bid goodbye around 6. His one-night sleep in a poor tribal’s house may have been Rahul’s effort to better understand India. But for the Khond tribals, who have together about 400 votes, it could mean all of them may vote for the Congress.
“He is such a simple boy. I think we should vote for him,” Surkha Mollick, a 60-year-old woman who is all praise for Rahul, says. But then, Naveen Patnaik also came to the village once? “He came for a few minutes, Rahul spent a night,” she retorts.
In this tribal hamlet, who to vote is not left to individuals. It is a collective decision to be taken around midnight a day before polling. “We haven’t yet decided. But I think the decision will be between BJD and Congress,” Pavitra Mollick 36, a warden who for months guarded a sub-jail where Kandhamal rioters were kept, says.
What does Kapilas, Rahul’s host, think? Should they vote for Congress? “He did not ask us for votes. We are yet to decide. I think we should vote for Congress,” he says.
But the trouble with such vote -gathering tactics is it is impossible to replicate them across India, with a staggering over 6 lakh villages. That is clear even in Orissa, where Congress isn’t hoping to do any better.
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