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The train is an hour late.
Twenty-one-year-old Shubham Jaiswal has been waiting on platform no. 1 of the Amritsar railway station to catch the train for his hometown, Allahabad.
A student, he had voted for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the general elections last year. But he is not very happy with the performance of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government at the Centre, which the BJP leads.
“(Prime Minister Narendra) Modi has not done anything substantial in his first year. He decreased the prices initially but then raised it significantly,” said Jaiswal, who assists his father at a grocery store.
He had voted for the Samajwadi Party in the 2012 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections.
Two months before the general elections last year, I had travelled on this train to gauge the pulse of the voters. A year later, I took the same train to get a sense of what people feel about Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government.
Not much seems to have changed around here.
People are compelled to wait for trains running late, dust the dirty green seats before occupying these, complain about defunct fans and the lack of recharging points for cell phones, and the absence of water mugs and soap in the sleeper-class lavatories.
Cockroaches and rats scurry on the floor with impunity.
The train is packed, with many travelling without a confirmed ticket.
“Instead of frequently travelling to other countries, the Prime Minister should travel on a train for a day to assess the ground realties,” said Surender Singh, an agitated farmer from Punjab's Gurdaspur district.
“For us, nothing has changed. In fact, it has become bad for farmers. The politicians will fill their coffers first; then, they will think about us.”
Singh’s anger stems from the fact that the Union government is not procuring wheat and his harvest has been lying in the open for the past 15 days.
At present, the BJP is in an alliance with the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal government, which is losing popularity by the day.
Overnight, the train leaves behind Jalandhar and Ludhiana stations, arriving at Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh — a distance of more than 500 km.
The shrill voices of tea and snack vendors wake up the passengers. A vendor screaming newspaper headlines about an Al-Qaeda threat to Modi gets many out of their beds. Outside, the windows provide a panoramic view of passing fields, where the farmers are reaping wheat or preparing the fields to plant a new sugarcane crop.
“Around 30 per cent of the people have understood that Modi is not performing. The rest are realising that no fresh development has taken place in one year. Modi has been advocating ‘Make in India’, but we always had the technology and expertise to do it. All he should do is support us,” said Prem Sharma, a dealer in farm machinery in Shahjahanpur district — about 170 km northwest of Lucknow.
Uttar Pradesh has the largest number of members (80) in the Lok Sabha. An excellent performance in the state was one of the prime reasons for Modi coming to power with a thumping majority.
The Assembly election in the state is due 2017 and people are not too pleased with the BJP’s performance.
“Many have begun to look back at the Congress, which used to gradually raise the prices of petrol and diesel. The BJP increased it by Rs 4 in one stroke. It is a government of corporates and benefiting only them,” said police constable Rameshwar Prasad, standing at the door of the train, somewhere between Bareilly and Amethi, the stronghold of Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi.
“Many have begun to look back at the Congress, which used to gradually raise the prices of petrol and diesel. The BJP increased it by Rs 4 in one stroke. It is a government of corporates and benefiting only them,” said police constable Rameshwar Prasad, standing at the door of the train, somewhere between Bareilly and Amethi, the stronghold of Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi.
“Even the Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana is a sham. The banks will do business with the money we deposit in these accounts,” said Awdesh Kumar, an Amethi resident.
AMRITSAR TO HOWRAH
AMRITSAR TO HOWRAH
Distance: 1,922 km
Train: Amritsar-Howrah Express
Arif Khan, a medical practitioner in Jaunpur, said neither the “acche din (good days)” nor black money — promised by the Prime Minister during his election campaign — has come in the past year. “Modi took one year to understand the system and functioning of the government. Let see what he does in the remaining four.”
The youth are somewhat divided in their opinion on how Modi has performed in his first year.
Sandeep Singh, 28, of Hardoi district wanted some income tax relief in the 2015 Budget. His neighbour and railway employee, Rakesh Kumar, 26, complained about reduction in daily allowances. His favourite punch bag is the media.
“Media should be blamed for the ‘Modi wave’ in villages. Innocent villagers got swayed,” Rakesh said, wrapping a cloth over his face to protect it from the heat sweeping through the general compartments.
But many — youths and elders — believe it is only fair to judge the prime minister’s performance after his five-year term.
Lokesh Sharma, 24, and Anoop Mishra, 23, said Modi’s polices were correct.
“People should have patience. He is not waiving farm loans because he needs the money to run the country.
He is showing financial prudence,” said Mishra, who teaches at an engineering college.
Manav Sharma, an assistant sales manager in Modi’s constituency, Varanasi said things will not change unless people change themselves.
“The Swachch Bharat, or ‘Clean India’, campaign can never be a success in Varanasi because most people spit tobacco on the road. They are habituated to chewing betel leaf. They can change Modi at the Centre and bring someone else in but they can never give up the habit,” said Sharma, pointing to the recently placed dustbins at Varanasi station — around 230 km north of Bihar capital Patna.
In Bihar, where the BJP had won 22 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats last year, the mood seems to have changed. The state is scheduled to go to elections later this year. But with archrivals Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) and former chief minister Lalu Prasad’s Rashtriya Janata Dal joining hands, the BJP’s prospects may not seem
too bright.
“Where is the black money which Modi promised to repatriate in 100 days? When the Congress could not remove Article 370 from Kashmir in 60 years, how can the BJP do it five years? The BJP made false promises. The political parties have become professional and evoke public sentiments at the right time,” said A K Malik, a government employee in Patna.
“What purpose will Modi achieve by making income and asset details of government employees public? No government can survive by disturbing the service class,” he added.
Having covered nearly 2,000 km, the train finally arrives at Howrah on the banks of the Hoogly. In West Bengal, the BJP has made a few recent inroads. But despite its posturing as the main opposition to the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC), it will take more years to make any impact on the ground, if the recent civic body elections are anything to go by.
Some people in Kolkata, however, believe despite the results, TMC is steadily losing to BJP.
“We all know how elections are won in the state. Had they been free and fair, BJP would have won many seats,” said Ravi Mishra, a taxi driver who migrated to Kolkata from Bihar 18 years earlier.
Support for the two parties seems to be divided on linguistic lines.
“Mamata is very popular among the Bengalis,” said Mishra. “Unless the BJP gains strength incadres, it will be very difficult for them to win elections in West Bengal.”
