Congress has been the pre-eminent political party in India for decades–and it has long relied on the mystique of the Nehru-Gandhi family for its electoral success. Rahul’s great grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, was independent India’s first prime minister; his grandmother, Indira Gandhi, and father, the late Rajiv Gandhi, were both prime ministers. Rahul’s mother, Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, is the chief of Congress and wields immense power both in the party and the government. While Congress is the largest party in Parliament and the chief member of the ruling United Progressive Alliance, it hasn’t won a majority of votes in a national election in 20 years. That’s partly because Congress’s traditional support base among upper-caste Hindus, Dalits and Muslims have drifted away to rival sectarian parties. And it’s partly because Congress has become a political also ran in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populated state. Fifteen years ago, after failing to fulfill its development promises, the party was nearly wiped out in the state.
A majority of Congress politicians are considered loyal sycophants, and they believe Rahul is the key to rescuing the party in Uttar Pradesh–and, after that, bolstering its national prospects. “Rahul Gandhi has many ideas that can serve the country well,” says Madhu Goud Yaskhi, a Congress member of Parliament who also runs a successful law firm in New York. “He is deeply secular, has clear ideas about education, health care and development and is very down to earth. He should be inducted into the party leadership or government.”
Like other Gandhis before him, Rahul entered politics to follow a family tradition. Unlike his father, mother and grandmother, Rahul is not a reluctant politician, but a deliberate one. He is already one of his mother’s key advisers and confidants, and managed her landslide victory in a by-election earlier this year. Sonia would like Rahul to take over a party leadership post, such as head of the youth Congress, but has said publicly that the decision is his to make. Rahul hasn’t yet agreed to take up the Uttar Pradesh campaign, and political analysts say his hesitancy is understandable: reviving Congress’s fortunes in the state would be a tough, maybe even futile job. Three other caste- and religious-based parties are now entrenched in Uttar Pradesh. Rahul doesn’t want to get tagged with a major failure in the early stages of his political career.
Rahul has long kept a low profile, though it’s getting harder to maintain as Congress members increasingly treat him as a center of power. He grew up in a sterilized security bubble, and seldom strays from it. He rarely speaks to the media. Critics suggest, perhaps unfairly, that he’s little more than a dilettante. After a year of college in Delhi, he took economic courses both at Cambridge and Harvard, but failed to earn a degree. In 1994 he worked for a financial consultancy called Monitor Group in London, but didn’t stick with the job for very long. Despite his pedigree, Rahul wants to be a regular guy–of sorts. He’s a sportsman, is keen on rifle shooting and cricket and has a Spanish girlfriend named Veronique whom he met while studying in England. He apparently has no plans to marry soon. “He has just been given a wide space to play around,” says political scientist Ajay Mehra of the Center for Public Affairs in New Delhi. “He has shown no visible promise, not even symbolic gestures, of [being] a good leader.” Mehra faults Congress for failing to “democratize” its leadership, saying that it “pathetically clings to the Nehru-Gandhi family.”
Rahul has said that he could have gotten into politics after his father’s death in 1991, but at that time he had nothing to offer. Does he now? He has not made any stirring speeches in Parliament, and his views on big topics like foreign policy, finance and rival Pakistan are not known. He has said that he’d like to create a “new brand of politics” in India, which would not divide people on the basis of caste or religion. And he wants nongovernmental organizations to play an important role in the country’s development.
Despite being largely a blank slate, analysts say his 2004 parliamentary win in the family’s home district of Amethi (in Uttar Pradesh) was impressive. He campaigned tirelessly in searing heat–rubbing shoulders with poor villagers, sitting in their mud huts, carrying around his laptop containing key data about the district and its development projects. He seemed sincere, say supporters, and, with his disarming smile, connected with the voters.
Fellow Congress M.P. Milind Deora says Rahul is detail-oriented. “While discussing any plan, he always asks for specifics on how it could be implemented.” Deora recently took a delegation of young Congress members to a meeting with Sonia, pleading with her to give Rahul a more active party role. The reason is obvious: an illustrious name casts a favorable glow on the party. At least for a while. As Mehra reminds us, “Charisma can’t get you anywhere in the long run. Remember, both Indira and Rajiv had charisma but they both were also thrown out of power by disillusioned Indians.”
And there’s the rub. When Rahul does step out into the spotlight, he’ll face huge expectations. India’s masses of poor and underprivileged are surely ready to give him their good wishes. But their loyalty has limits. They will want Congress and its members to aggressively pursue policies that reduce India’s grinding poverty–a daunting, long-term task, to say the least. “Rahul is an amiable person,” says M.P. Manvendra Singh of the rival Bharatiya Janata Party. “But it is unfair to put so much pressure on him to turn around a dead party in Uttar Pradesh.” Rahul Gandhi is acutely aware of the privileges and burdens that come with his name. Now he will have to commit himself to putting it to work for his party and his country.
