Bed of roses or nails? Rahul is about to find out

DEORIA: If Rahul Gandhi's farmer outreach succeeds, the Congress can say the idea really "cot on". By the time the Congress vice-president is done, nearly 60,000 cots would have borne the weight of thousands of people across Uttar Pradesh - many of them used and reused for the novel " khatiya sabha" (cot meetings) that party strategists have planned in the poll-bound state. Needless to say, Rahul too will sit on a cot. Around 3,000 khatiyas have already reached Rudrapur in Deoria district, eastern Uttar Pradesh, where Rahul's first cot meeting is scheduled for today. Some 40 such khatiya meetings have been planned. The cots have all come from Sambhal in western Uttar Pradesh and Congress workers claim that each can accommodate five persons. Rahul, though, will have a cot all to himself. But Akhilesh Pratap Singh, the Congress's Rudrapur MLA, wasn't cribbing. "This programme is essentially for the farmers of Deoria district. But other people have also been invited. Rahul will directly interact with them. It is a great occasion for me that such an innovative election campaign is starting from my constituency," Singh said while supervising the arrangements on the Satasi Inter College ground. Congress sources had said last week that the cots would be similar to the simple hand-woven rope-and-bamboo ones found in rural homes in the region. But those brought from Sambhal are different: they are machine-made with shining polythene. "Over 60,000 such polythene-rope bamboo cots have been manufactured within 10 days in a factory in Sambhal. The ropes have been made with a machine and hand-woven by about 100 workers. The weight of each cot is about 8kg," said an associate of the manufacturer. He said the polythene ropes weaken fast. "But we can reuse the bamboo." Each cot costs Rs 600 but the associate refused to share more details. Mrityunjay Prasad Visharad, a social worker, said Rahul's cot meetings would be the Congress's answer to the chai pe charcha (discussions over tea) the BJP organised to drum up support for Narendra Modi ahead of the 2014 parliamentary elections. "Chai pe charcha was planned to strike a chord with people. Rahul will also mingle with farmers at the khatiya sabha meetings," Visharad said. -The Telegraph Calcutta