Rahul Gandhi and kinley water

Today’s the Hindu shows the pictures of few political leaders quenching their thirst in the midst of the surging election heat and as expected Rahul Gandhi was there wearing a bright red turban and drinking kinely water. You have too much of Rahul Gandhi these days in the print and visual media as he is one of the indispensable ingredients in the election masala- young, energetic and ‘charismatic’. As he claimed in 2004; “ I am here as a sensible, responsible Indian, because I want to help people get on track”. Unlike Sanjay Dutt, he does not offer “Jadoo ki jhappi and pappi”. These days, even we are unable to locate his Columbian or (Spanish?) girl friend. The confusion/debate over his studies has got clarified, when his university came out and said that they have awarded an M. Phil to him in Development Economics. (One may recall that his mother was also got into a controversy on her academic qualifications) His only thought is about how to reinvent India. For that, he spends a night at Dalit household; holds talks with Shivkumari Kori of Simara (Sultanpur), about her life as a Dalit widow. He can learn a bit more from his Grandma who even dared to travel on an elephant back to reach an inaccessible village. It will not be a long wait for us to see him as the prime minister of the country. His ‘smarter than him’ sister is discreetly pushing that idea ahead while disappointing many not so young PM aspirants of the oldest party.

What invoked my curiosity was that Rahul drinking a bottle of kinley water. If he so much pro poor how come he is not aware of the plight of the poor tribal villagers of Plachimada in Palghat who is putting up an unequal fight with the Coke company since many years now. During the last few years, the company dried up the water sources in the village and left the villagers to mend themselves without drinking water. They have to walk 3 kilometers for fetching water. This shows the hypocrisy of our leaders in the name of development. We are so much used to tokenism; hence talking about one Shivkumari in the parliament is good enough to make you a pro poor leader.

Then why talk about Rahul drinking kinley, most of our so called civil society organisations do the same thing. Even in the workshops against water privatization, it is a common sight that the water served is invariably from these giant companies. Interestingly, I used to have a boss who really chokes when she talks about the street children and whenever she talked about these deprived children she needed a bottle of pepsi to overcome her choking!!