Women take the lead in extreme adoration. Rahul is the embodiment of a range of male relatives. He is their boyfriend/ husband/ brother/ brother-in-law/ son/ nephew/ grandson. Even men giggle flirtatiously as he passes by in his white Qualis, bursting with marigold garlands (with the defeated looking Capt Satish Sharma beaming irrelevantly in the back seat). Hundreds of Youth Congress cadres thunder past on Hero Hondas, Enfields and Rajdoot motorbikes, a mob of scruffy outriders escorting their treasured VIP. “He is the only thing his poor mother has!” a woman in Lohsanpur village sobs, “She lost everything. Lost her husband. Lost her mother-in-law. Now the poor widow hands us her eklauta hira (only jewel). God bless him!”

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The urban journalist, disapproving of dynasty, anxious about the Colombian girlfriend (does this mean a Colombian first lady in the future, for god’s sake?), agitated about the rootlessness of privileged folk and their pocket boroughs, is dismissed with an impatient roar from this unabashedly hysterical swarm: “You don’t understand. He is our son!”

And this in contemporary UP! Where Dalit and OBC assertion rampages forward, where ferocious caste politics has become the only ticket to capturing the gaddi at Lucknow, where the landscape is so highly politicised that almost every kutcha track in UP is marked by the familiar cavalcade of white ambassadors with flashing red lights. In UP, politics is not about issues or ideas. It’s about employment, social mobility, wealth, and yet, in this highly competitive and politically ambitious environment, Amethi strikes out as an island of old-fashioned surrender to the king.

Travel around the villages of Amethi and you can’t help feeling astounded at what a neglected constituency it is. For a seat as high-profile, as much in the public eye, there is a sharp contrast between the well-dressed scion in his crisp kurta pyjama and his wretched and destitute worshippers. Unemployment is brutal, over 80 per cent, only 40 per cent are literate or have access to drinking water. Electricity supply is non-existent in some areas, in others, it flickers for barely six hours a day. The soil in Amethi is sandy and salty, classified as usad or wasteland in which nothing grows, except scrub and small trees. The roads are appalling, dotted with deep potholes and ditches, and there are huge, untarred stretches of pebble tracks that look like dry river beds. Hutments are mud-daubed with thatched roofs, the price of kerosene is too high for the poor to cook even a single meal and there is no money to repair rundown schools or add to college facilities. Locals are quick to point out that Amethi was a jungle before the Gandhis arrived, that there was nothing here. Now, waving wheat fields, canals, compensation during disasters and institutions like the Sanjay Gandhi Hospital have transformed living conditions. Yet the decline since Rajiv Gandhi’s time is clear.

Industry in Amethi is ruined. Malvika Stainless Steel no longer functions as it used to. Cement factories have shut down. Samrat Cycles has shut down. And vast numbers have become unemployed as a result. As Rajeshwar Singh, a retired principal in a local Intermediate Collage pointed out, it is savage unemployment, rather than love for the Gandhis which is the reason for the huge crowds. There is a more chilling reason for the hundreds of families standing in the sun for hours. Not just loyalty but deep despair and absolutely nothing to do.

Politics in Amethi is a firmly closed shop. No local charismatic youth can ever aspire for the top political job because he can never hope to gain a ticket either from Sultanpur or from Amethi or from Rae Bareli. Local BSP members like Sripat Maurya and Suresh Kamal say they joined the BSP, not so much because they believe in the Dalit cause but because there are simply no opportunities in the Congress. The capture of the party by the Gandhis has meant that there is no chance of a political career for anyone else. To be a Congressman in Amethi is to be an also-ran. Indeed, the closed-ness of Congress politics, the fawning loyalty of its cadres, the absence of democratic functioning within the party, the absence of industrial development or of a modern party machine, the ridiculous dependence on a single “family member” makes Amethi a mirror image of the contemporary Congress.

In this sense, the Gandhi family has been a blessing and a curse for Amethi, just as it is a blessing and curse for the Congress. By treating Amethi as a pocket borough, local support has been taken for granted. There is a belief that even if there is no development, Amethi will remain bound to the family. Amethi dreams hopelessly of Rajiv, caught in a time warp, and Congress still believes in its god-given right to rule.

But ironically, like with the rest of UP, there are stirrings of change. Out of five assembly segments,the Congress only holds one, two are with the Samjawadi Party. Last year, the BSP won a seat in a by-election, although later the candidate switched to the SP. Dalit and OBC identities are now being strongly asserted, and there is a constant search for a political platform that will give space to this new assertiveness.

Candidate Grandson then bears a unique burden. He, unlike his grandmother and father, is a dynast in times of galloping caste ambitions. It’s no longer enough to simply be Rajiv ka beta and Indira ka pota. If he is to answer the desperation in his constituents’ eyes, if he is to meet the caste challenge, then he will not only have to carry out development, but set in motion a semblance of democracy, both in Amethi, as well as in the Congress. If he wants his family business to survive, Rahul Gandhi has to work towards making his family name irrelevant.