Rahul Gandhi, the suave, Cambridge-educated heir to India's most powerful political dynasty, is on a mission to show that he is at one with the poorest and most downtrodden in India's rural heartland.
In a sports ground on the dry plains of Rajasthan, 15,000 people, most of them farmers, sat beneath an orange canopy, enduring temperatures of 42C, as he told them that his Congress party had the fate of India's common man, the am aadmi, at its heart.
The audience, many of them wafer thin and wearing broken plastic shoes, had nothing in common with this privileged emblem of India's elite, and yet Gandhi's potent political heritage and his determination to focus on the needs of the dispossessed won him enthusiastic applause.
A young mother, nursing her one-month-old daughter, wrapped on her lap in a frayed yellow strip of cloth, said she had braved the heat so her child could see the country's future prime minister. "I want her to grow up in an India ruled by Rahul Gandhi," she said.
Gandhi, 38, showed no signs of exhaustion on the 30th day of his helicopter tour of India, battling simultaneously to win votes for his party and to secure the continued pre-eminence of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, which has been at the summit of Indian politics for the past 60 years. Two-thirds of the way through polling, India's election rests on a knife-edge, with analysts uncertain who will be victorious when the results are given on 16 May.
The Congress party has staked its hopes for survival on Gandhi's ability to win the hearts of the 700 million Indians who still live on less than two dollars a day.
Gandhi, who was last year appointed the Congress party's general secretary, is giving the challenge everything he has.
In recent months he has cast aside his image as India's most eligible bachelor – his handsome, dimpled smile no longer features regularly on magazine society pages – and adopted a more sober persona, rebranding himself as the biggest champion of India's impoverished masses since Mother Teresa died.
During his address Gandhi did not speak of his family, but everyone in the audience knew his lineage: from his great-grandfather, Jawaharlal Nehru, the country's first prime minister, through to Indira, her son Rajiv – who took over as prime minister after Indira's murder and was blown up by a suicide bomber in 1991 – and his wife, Sonia, current leader of the Congress party, who declined the post of prime minister despite leading the Congress party to victory in 2004.
In this state the votes are finely balanced between the Congress party and the main opposition Bharatiya Janata party, and much of Rahul's speech was directed against his political rivals. Wiping the sweat from his glasses, he reminded his audience of the BJP's ill-fated "India Shining" slogan, which was the theme of its over-confident 2004 election campaign, when its leaders focused exuberantly on the nation's soaring economic growth. The Congress party successfully retaliated, pointing out that the vast majority of Indians endured lives that could scarcely be described as shining, and swept to power, promising to defend the interests of those left behind.
The Congress party has been in power, in a coalition with several allied parties, for five years, but the benefits of growth have yet to spread to the rural poor.
Gandhi argued that this was still a work in process, listing initiatives which have brought subsidised work schemes to the countryside and reduced the crippling interest paid by farmers.
He told the audience how this year he had brought "an English minister to see how people in India's villages lived". He was referring to a trip in January with David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, when the two spent a night in a mud hut in Gandhi's constituency, sleeping on charpoys. The excursion provoked considerable controversy in Delhi. "The BJP said 'why are you showing our poverty off to the English?'" Gandhi said, bending forward over the podium. "I was not showing off our poverty, I was showing him the powerhouse of India. These poor people are the people who will make India great. India's powerhouse is not in the cities, not in the metros. It lies in the villages."
The crowds roared their approval and rushed forward to see Gandhi's departure. If there was a contradiction between his earnest avowal of empathy with the nation's excluded, and his rapid exit in a helicopter back to his Delhi residence, in a rich, tree-lined enclave of the capital, it was not remarked upon by the supporters left behind in a cloud of dust.
It was hard to find anyone in the crowds to criticise him, even obliquely.
Jag Ram, 70, a cotton farmer, had risen at four to go 30 miles (48 km) in a bus with 20 other farmers to hear Gandhi speak. His membership of the dispossessed class was obvious from his mismatched shoes. He said he had benefited from the programme to relieve farmers' debts, and planned to vote Congress again, as his father and grandfather did. It was the first time he had seen the youngest active member of the dynasty. "His relatives gave their lives for this country, that's why we should vote for his party." Rahul was beginning to acquire something of his grandmother's stature, he added. "He is not old enough yet, but in the future it would be good to see him as India's prime minister."
The question of age is a key element in Gandhi's campaign. With 70% of India's population under 35, the Congress party hopes its flagging popularity can be revitalised by the transformation of Gandhi into a powerful force within the party. India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, is 76, and recently had heart surgery, while Lal Krishna Advani, the leader of the BJP, is 81. There is much talk of the need for a younger generation.
Gandhi likes to dwell on his youth, calling on India's millions of "other youngsters" to join the Congress party youth wing to help rebuild India. Working with the youth groups is his immediate focus, he says, rejecting the idea that he is angling to be named prime minister if the Congress does well in the polls.
Sonia Gandhi has stated that she will back the current prime minister to stay in his post, and her son has agreed. "Mr Singh is the best prime minister that this country could have," Rahul said.
Political analysts used to dismiss Rahul as the less talented of Sonia and Rajiv's two children, casting him in the shadow of his younger sister, Priyanka, who despite enormous popularity (down in part to her physical resemblance to Indira Gandhi) has refused to enter politics. However, observers concede that Rahul, after five years as an MP, no longer has the awkward schoolboy demeanour that used to characterise his speeches, and agree that he has developed confidence. His earlier political diffidence, his weekends spent paragliding or dining glamorous women at Delhi's most expensive Italian restaurant (where starters cost more than the average weekly salary), have all been replaced by a zeal to claim his "birthright". Over the past year he has travelled extensively, familiarising himself with the remote rural extremes of the nation.
At a press conference in Delhi yesterday he returned to his theme of the need to spread India's growth to the dispossessed. "I go to the villages where there is nothing, and I see people who are amazing, who put all of us to shame. The real energy of India is in the villages. We need to transfer the growth to that population."
Returning to a theme well-worn by his father, he asked why it was that only 10 paisa of every rupee of government money spent on development actually reached its intended target – the outcome, historically, of entrenched corruption.
But these lines of argument, while successful themes for an opposition party, could backfire for a party already in power. MJ Akbar, a columnist and magazine editor, said: "We have become so entranced by the dynasty that we are really forgetting the larger issues – has poverty been reduced since they've been in power? Has the quality of life improved? Has governance improved? If only 10 paisa are getting through, then who's responsible? They've been in power for the last five years, they should be making sure that 90% gets through to the poor."
Gandhi believes his party cannot be held responsible for such ancient problems. "We run one of the biggest administrative systems in the world, next to China," he said. "To change this is not an event. It is a process, a long-term process."
Critics also say that Gandhi's emphasis on poverty alleviation means he barely mentions India's new economic woes, its failure to contain terrorism, and his government's inability to push through long-promised reforms. They add that Gandhi is remarkably hazy when he comes to outlining precisely how his party will further spread the benefits of growth.
In his speeches Gandhi talks with passion about the power of India's democracy, but that too is dangerous territory, because, as his enemies delight in pointing out, there is something deeply undemocratic, if not positively feudal, about the way he has been helped to rise by his party. Maywati, chief minister in Uttar Pradesh and an arch political foe, calls him a "crown prince who inherited power".
There is a paradox with his career: how is it that a five-generation political dynasty has catapulted its heir to a position of power at the head of the world's largest democracy? "It is undemocratic," Gandhi agreed yesterday. "My position gives me certain advantages."
Somewhat unconvincingly, he said his background had instilled in him a desire to reform a system riddled with nepotism. "The fact that the Indian political system tends to be about who you know and who your brother is, that is just a fact of life. I want to change that. I consider it an honour and my duty to try to change the system of which I am the result. It is ironic, but that is how it is."
excertps from the guardian uk
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