While getting a taste of rural India in the dusty villages of Western Uttar Pradesh, Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi also discovered that the common folks are looking for answers on issues such as corruption and price rise.

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“Our government has taken strong action against anyone involved in corruption. Look at the ministers who are in jail, look what happened yesterday,” he had to tell villagers who voiced their concern over corruption.

But he stumbled for an answer over price rise. “We don’t have jobs, our land is being taken away, and then there is price rise to break our backs,” said a young man. The Gandhi scion who has admitted that he has learnt more during his padyatra than he had done in Lok Sabha kept silent to the youth’s complaints.

He had to concede that the coalition government had its own limitations. “You cannot get a law passed in five minutes. You have to talk to other parties, and they say that something is not acceptable to them in Bengal,” he explained without naming the Trinamool Congress for its objections to the draft of the land acquisition bill.

Rahul now heads to Aligarh for the climax of his five-day padyatra for a show of strength at a mahapanchayat to be graced by Congress bigwis, including Union ministers who have been conspicuous by their absence in this journey.

But the Congress leader has kept up the strident tone of attack against the Mayawati government.

“There is something wrong with the process. If the farmers are not happy, then the middle class families who have invested their savings in housing projects have to suffer,” he said while referring to a Supreme Court judgment that has directed that land acquired for housing projects in Greater Noida be returned to the farmers.