All India Congress Committee General Secretary Rahul Gandhi was on a (less than) one day visit in Ahmedabad yesterday.

Whenever Rahul Gandhi is in Gujarat, we the people on the banks of the river Sabarmati realize that the nearly finished Congress party is still alive here in this land of Narendra Damodardas Modi. We realize this through traffic road blocks for smooth and secure run of convoy, through trucks passing on the roads loaded with people from slums for his rally, and through the overwhelmingly dominating newspaper coverage next day visibly to impress the prince who may be a future Prime Minister and therefore important.

Gujarat Congress welcomes Rahul and Sonia like the Gods(and not like leaders of guests). This is a very old phenomena in the state. Just the day before yesterday I visited a zoo in Ahmedabad’s Kankaria area. In Jawaharlal Nehru’s time, Ahmedabad’s then Congress mayor never let a single opportunity pass by to please Nehru. He named Ahmedabad’s Kankaria Zoo as ‘Kamla Nehru Zoo.’ Kamla Nehru, wife of Jawaharlal had nothing to do with animals or this zoo or with the city of Ahmedabad.

Coming back to Prince Rahul, as a journalist my job is not about just witnessing, listening and writing the things but it is actually and more importantly about asking/probing the things. Rahul Gandhi’s several hours long visit had not any provision for media interaction (these days politicians attend fewer press conferences and are hardly answerable.) But if there was a chance, I wanted to put several questions to him.

I wanted to ask why Afzal Guru had yet not been hanged even after all these months of the Supreme court verdict?

I wanted to ask why the government of India had yet not given Pakistan a beffitting reply and why even a single step of bravery or show of strength had not been taken in response to the Mumbai attacks?

I also wanted to ask why our borders with Nepal and Bangladesh are open welcoming thousands of intruders, some of them ISI agents? Why advocates of SIMI such as Mr. Lalu Prasad Yadav and Ram Vilas Paswan are still in the ministry? Why Arjun Singh who favored the Jamia University Vice Chancellor for his stand on providing legal aid to boys who confessed their involvement in Delhi blasts is still a minister in the central cabinet? Why should we the tax payers bear expenses of such ministers’ security, pay and packages just because of your coalition compulsions?

Then I wanted to ask Rahul Gandhi, has he ever traveled in non-ac 2nd class general compartment of Indian Railways like a common citizen? Has he ever visited local collector office for land records or any other procedure? Has he ever stood in a long queue for kerosene? Has he ever personally faced issues like unavailability of electricity, water, medicine, telephone line, costly health care etc at 10 Janpath?

I wanted to ask this because I firmly believe that India deserves a rooted bottoms up leader and not some top down one born with a silver spoon(diamond spoon in this case) and not some dynasty prince for whom distance between Delhi and Ahmedabad is just half an hour because he has never taken a train or bus route, for whom the collector office is just a place to fill up the election candidature form with voices of shouting slogans of “Rahul Gandhi Zindabad”, for whom hardships such as the lack of availability of water, electricity, telephone line, fuel etc. don’t exist and have never been experienced(in 10 Janpath). Rahul’s visits to India’s villages are good for pro-poor-image make-over but is this enough? Real Rahul emerging in another headline is partying with his pals at a farmhouse on Delhi’s outskirts at Radhey Mohan Chowk till 5 in the morning completely out of sync with the mood of the nation soon after 26/11 Mumbai attacks. Even after several visits to villages, Rahul’s connection with the poor and especially the middle class of India is completely missing.

Rahul in his Ahmedabad rally praised Gandhiji and even said that he follows him, in this context I wanted to ask him what the Congress party has so far done and intends to do in future for total ban on slaughter of bovine? This was Gandhiji’s wish after all.

And I wanted to ask Rahul Gandhi about his opinion on Christian religious conversions.Gandhiji was not in favor of missionary tactics of religious conversions. If Rahul follows Gandhiji then he should answer this because these days in certain pockets of India, this is a boiling issue. Reading Gandhiji, talking about him in speeches is all very well but then you have to live up to his beliefs too. Don’t just believe but live Gandhiji or better leave Gandhiji Mr. Rahul Gandhiji.