Mumbai, July 22: Shashikala Ringne and her husband work as farm labourers. At the end of the day, they take home less than Rs 100. Ninety, to be precise.

Despite grinding poverty, they want to educate their three sons even if it means cutting down on food.

Their eldest, Rahul, wants to complete his ITI course and join a private company in Pune.

Second son Yogesh scored 72 per cent in his SSC this year and aspires to become a collector. Their youngest, Jahendra, wants to be an engineer.

But there’s no electricity in their home in Sonkhaas, a village on Ner-Yavatmal Road where Congress MP Rahul Gandhi stopped a while during his three-day tour of drought-hit Vidarbha.

In his speech in Parliament today, where members voted on the US nuclear deal, Rahul narrated the story of Shashikala and her family to make the point that the deal would ensure energy security and bring light to poor homes.

But could Shashikala help her sons become what they wanted to be?

Pat came the reply. “Education is what we can give them,” she told Rahul. “The rest is up to them.”

Rahul also spoke about the struggle of Kalawati Bandurkar.

The Vidarbha farmer’s widow could never have thought her name would one day be mentioned in Parliament.

But on Tuesday, her name echoed in the House as she became the symbol of India’s quest for ending its post-Pokhran isolation.

Rahul recalled how Kalawati had dug a well to store rainwater as insurance for a particularly bad season in rain-deficient Vidarbha.

“But agriculture is not woman-friendly,” the mother of seven daughters and two sons told the Amethi MP. “Every day is a grind.”

Back in Delhi, the point Rahul was trying to make was clear. Nuclear energy might help reduce Kalawati’s daily toil. An irrigation pump, powered by nuclear energy, would make a world of a difference.

So the deal was not just about cementing a partnership with America, or competing with China, but also about something as basic as reducing poverty.

Rahul had driven down on dusty roads on a hush-hush tour of Vidarbha, where agrarian crisis has killed more than 2,000 farmers.

While Maharashtra Congress leaders wondered what the son of their party chief Sonia Gandhi was doing in their state, Rahul travelled more than 500km from Amravati to Yavatmal and Wardha to meet farmers and understand if the Rs 71,000-crore loan waiver had brought them some relief.

It was in Yavatmal, the worst hit among Vidarbha’s six districts, Rahul met Kalawati.

Mounting debts had pushed Kalawati’s husband Parshuram to suicide in December 2005. He managed to marry off three daughters before he succumbed to depression.

But Kalawati refused to give up.

She now cultivates 10 acres taken on annual lease. She has sown cotton on six acres and soya bean and jowar on two acres each. “The jowar has not germinated,” she told Rahul.

She has also married off two other daughters and is trying to educate her sons.

On Ner-Yavatmal Road, Rahul made an unscheduled stop to visit a school, where he had kichuri served as part of the mid-day meal scheme before stepping into Shashikala’s hut.