Why Rahul Gandhi spoke for just 3 minutes in Bengaluru

Our good old Rahul Gandhi did not have much to say on Oct 9 in Bengaluru, as he finished his first lap of touring Karnataka. He had visited Mandya village before coming to the Silicon city to condole the deaths of three farmers who committed suicide because of draught.

Already late by two hours at the venue, most of the two hour span was covered by KPCC President G Parmeshwaram, H K Patil and other MLAs who spoke galore about Congress had done and what BJP had not done.

Mahesh, who had been nominated 9 times in the gram Panchayat elections from Shimoga district explained how SC/ST and women candidates have been preferred. MLA Jyothi M from the same district spoke about how land of 700 farmers had been returned to them with their legal documents and how BJP has been snatching them (but didn't we know otherwise?).

While HK Patil suggested that everything that had been put forward for farmers in 2009 be implemented, CM Siddaramaiah accused Modi of going on foreign tours and not visit the farmers even once.

He said,"farmers have faced 16,000 crores of crop loss, not a single penny for compensation was offered. PM is irresponsible. He gave Rs 1.25 lakh crore for Bihar, but nothing for Karnataka. The government did this deliberately as this is a non-BJP state. In fact, the BJP yatra was a drama. The Khalsa Banduri dam project is also being intercepted by the BJP."

3 minute monologue

Rahul could have spoken for such a short time, most part of it thanking people around him, for three reasons-first, he was late by 2 hours, 2nd he did know what to say and 3rd he did not want to talk much to avoid awkward glares from the media.

Repeating the same old things as to how BJP had cheated the country and how governance was wrong. "We had made programs for the last 10 years and nothing was implemented. We had given authorities to the Panchayats and councillors to develop their region, but BJP thought the country could be run from the PMO office and the bureaucrats."

That was it!

This kept us wondering why he spoke for just 3 minutes and we came up with the following possibilities:

1. 10 years of leadership: What if he had to answers questions related to the 10 years of UPA's leadership when there were 3 lakh farmer suicidea across the country, roughly coming up to over 2,000 deaths every month in the last 10 years. What if he is asked why he was not talking about those deaths and the ones that took place recently after the Modi government came to power.

2. Embarassment: The 22 agricultural schemes that he was talking about have been modelled by the UPA government, but they never saw to their implementation . The Banks were asked to promote loan waivers for farmers, which they initially agreed to, but later came under the RBI influence, which blamed inflation and the lack of funds. There was no Plan B and the farmers were left with nothong. In fact, some of the schemes date back to 1988, with bare minimum changes.

3.Zonal-level, Panchayat level control: Was he talking about the Khaps? Most of them comprising of illiterate villagers who do not know the difference between the right and wrong. Pre-occupied by their own social justice system, the panchayats may not have the time to think about development in the region.

Hail Rahul Gandhi!