The Gandhi dynasty, continued(未附13張Rahul Gandhi相關成長照片)

The golden Rahul

Rahul Gandhi, a slow learner, will be tested as he steps up to national politics

Nov 19th 2011 | AMETHI, UTTAR PRADESH | from the print edition

LINGER by the wheat fields and scruffy villages of Amethi, Rahul Gandhi’s constituency, and praise rings out for Congress’s heir apparent. “I never thought he’d be so damn handsome”, trills one student, recalling the 41-year-old’s visit to her campus. The head of Amethi’s swanky charitable hospital was equally smitten when he inspected its new blood bank. Not the usual poker-stiff Indian politician, Mr Gandhi strides past security cordons to grab voters’ hands, tries out Awadhi, the local dialect, and holds late-night chats in low-caste homes. Draped in a red and gold sari, Shiv Kumari, a widow in Semra village, happily recalls three hours he spent in her tumbledown cottage. They nibbled vegetables and puri, though she admits “I don’t know why he came”.

Breaking bread with dalits once considered untouchable is a trademark of Mr Gandhi’s campaigns. But the Amethi MP seems happier on rural walkabouts, chatting to roadside tea-wallahs and farm workers,than dabbling in national politics, mixing with better educated or urban voters and speaking in Parliament (which he has done only six times in seven years).

His political model is clear. Sonia Gandhi, his mother and president of the ruling Congress Party, is similarly reticent, perhaps stemming from early anxiety over her facility in Hindi and a wish to avoid personal attacks over her Italian birth. Yet the more “Madam” has been an enigma, the greater has been her strength. “She has negated people with her silence,” says a friend. “I think that is her biggest weapon”. Mrs Gandhi arranged for her son to take the traditional family route to politics, as MP in Amethi, the heartland of the dynasty. If a Gandhi failed to flourish there, he would be in trouble.

Yet it takes little prodding for locals to voice doubts about him. As dusk falls, a long-serving Congressman grumbles that his MP is not “fast-forward”—slow to take decisions and quick to spurn colleagues. “Rahul Gandhi walks alone,” he says, “there are not so many people he is talking with.” A more senior party figure goes further, saying he shuns local bigwigs, not even bothering to say when he is visiting. His behaviour “has been very badly received [in the party], it is hurtful and might backfire on him one day.” Doubts persist over state elections in Uttar Pradesh, due next year. These require “a lot of introspection, action, planning—and frankly I’m not seeing that.” Mr Gandhi will be judged on whether he gets a strong result, meaning at least 50 seats in the state assembly.

Local carping might not matter, but it chimes with national grumbles. Two years ago Rahul spurned an offer of a cabinet post from the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, preferring to continue working in the party. Yet his performance has been underwhelming. Though his reforms of the youth wing are well-intentioned, his push for Congress to reject allies and promote young candidates in state elections earned poor returns from voters in Bihar and Kerala in the past year.

Nor have his interventions been inspiring. He claimed in May to have evidence that villagers in Uttar Pradesh, run by an opponent, had been murdered for their land. The accusation turned out to be baseless. No less troubling was a limp effort as part of a quartet of leaders delegated to lead Congress during the summer, when an anti-corruption populist, Anna Hazare, ran rings around the party. Newspapers and other media are unforgiving. The Hindu, a left-leaning broadsheet, summed him up in May as “Rahul in Blunderland”.

If he had time to get his footing, this might not matter. But now rumours swirl that he will soon get a big party job, even replacing his mother as boss. On November 14th Congress’s general secretary, Digvijay Singh, said the young “national leader” must take on bigger tasks. “The time has now come for Mr Rahul Gandhi to move into the mainstream.” His role in Uttar Pradesh will keep him to the fore.

The bigger reason is Mrs Gandhi’s undisclosed but serious illness, which required a month of treatment in the summer, reportedly at a New York cancer hospital. Stony official silence on her health encourages observers to assume the worst. Equally pressing is the exhaustion of Mr Singh’s ageing government, whose five top ministers now average nearly 74 years. No significant law has been passed since its re-election over two years ago, despite signs of slower growth, rising inflation and a storm over corruption. On November 12th Mr Singh said he would welcome a new party role for Mr Gandhi. A kick-start is sorely needed.

•  
• At an orphanage at the place where Indira Gandhi, his grandmother, was born
•  
•  
• Indira the prime minister, in 1973, with her young family. From the left: Sonia with Priyanka, Sanjay and Rajiv, and a very young Rahul
•  
•  
• Commemorating the death of Sanjay Gandhi, in 1981. Young Rahul on the left
•  
•  
• ’s funeral in 1984. Rahul in the background as Rajiv lights the pyre
•  
•  
• Commemorating Indira’s death in 1989. Rahul in dark suit and specs
•  
•  
• Rahul, with Sonia and Priyanka, mourning his father’s death in 1991
•  
•  
• With his mother, Sonia, on the train from Delhi to Allahabad, to disperse his father’s ashes
•  
•  
• Priyanka weds Robert Vadra, with Sonia, Rahul and an image of their father standing by their sides
•  
•  
• A pensive moment between mother and son at a campaign rally in Uttar Pradesh
• Getty Images
•  
• Entertaining Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, on one of his frequent visits to New Delhi
•  
•  
• A son consulting his mother, during an All-India Congress Committee session in Delhi, 2010
•  
•  
• Launching the latest Congress campaign in Uttar Pradesh, November 2011
•  
•  
• ’s portrait has already joined those of his ancestors, at a Congress office in Uttar Pradesh
• Adam Roberts

1 / 13

from the print edition | Asia

•  
•  
• Submit to reddit
• 1

View all comments (12)Add your comment

Related items

The golden Rahul

Nov 22nd 2011, 05:16

This Gandhi family, originated from Jawaharlal Nehru’s daughter Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi, has been keeping the peace of Southern Asia for a long time. The family, now mainly referring to the incumbent president Sonia Gandhi as well as her son Rahul Gandhi, may continue to lead India in traditional custom. From the death of Republic of India’s founder, Mahatma Gandhi, the assassination sometimes emerges due to race or religious concern until now, as we saw the Mumbai’s Bomb in 2006 and in 2009. For example, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in May 1991.

Basically speaking, National Congress Party held New Delhi’s power for most of time after 1947’s independence from British. The very big and old elephant, Manmohan Singh, wholly opened the India’s market to the world when he decided to abandon socialist plan as a finance minister about 1992, letting India be competitive Asian economy with his Oxford-educated economics cultivation. On the basis of high math-science ability and the relation of IBM, India rapidly develops high-tech chasing No.1 in various sides.

Mr. Singh vowed to be the incumbent prime minister in 2004’s summer, and then he improved many inner and foreign affairs. With his religion of Sikh, he tries hard to delineate the moderate direction for the domestic political structure; in addition, with the expansion of India’s economy, he strengthens the international diplomacy. In 2005, Mr. Singh got better friendships across Himalaya with China’s prime minister Wen Jia-Bao, surely forming the atmosphere of BRICs. Proud of the better infrastructure than China, he showed more and more achievements in front of the world. Since he won the election in 2009’s summer, the diplomatic vision has been expanding as we can see these two years’ intensive visitor to New Delhi.

About one year ago, Rahul Gandhi was sure to succeed Mr. Singh. In 2012, both India and China have respectively new prime ministers if few questioned. In both countries, younger generation will get the power of central government. Rahul Gandhi’s counterpart in China is Li Ke-Qiang, who is more experienced in politics than Rahul. As far as I contact with, both are very kind to exercise better policy than the predecessor’s.

At the beginning of the second millennium, many observers thought that India could surpass China for more democratic system and more intelligent brain. However, the serious corruption in Congress Party and failure to reach the expectation of GDP growth diminish Congress Party’s support. Therefore, Rahul may face some difficulties such as the east Indian coast similar to anarchy. Also, the new relation with Myanmar(about the share of energy), Vietnam(the development of South China Sea), Pakistan(the nuclear and race concerned) and Sri Lanka are challenges to Rahul, accompanying Beijing’s and Washington D.C.’s separately new economics and military strategy. To recover the honour of Taj Mahad is the first thing Rahul has to do.

    Recommended

    7

    Report

    Permalink

這篇風評不太好，不是英語語句問題，是之後筆者被提及也有，國際上當時已不希望印度國大黨繼續壟斷政治利益。果然之後2014年的選舉，因國大黨內貪汙腐化組織嚴重，團結力衰，是由印度人民黨的Narendra Damodardas Modi執政及控制下議院的人民院。

In India, next generation of Gandhi dynasty

Simon Denyer
Friday, Dec 2, 2011

Together, his great-grandfather, his grandmother and his father ruled India for 37 years, for most of its post-independence history.

But it has been more than 20 years since a member of the -Nehru-Gandhi family occupied the prime minister’s office, and Indians are wondering whether Rahul Gandhi has what it takes to follow in the dynastic tradition — and assume a role his Italian-born mother, Sonia, declined.

At 41, Gandhi is the most scrutinized politician in India today. The great-grandson of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, the grandson of Indira Gandhi, the son of Rajiv Gandhi, the -Western-educated Rahul is projected by admirers as the face of a young, modern India but reviled by foes as the personification of hereditary privilege.

Last month, with his mother suffering from an undisclosed but serious illness, Gandhi embarked on the biggest test of his political career, seeking to revive the Congress party’s political fortunes here in the vast and underdeveloped state of Uttar Pradesh, home to 200 million people, or one in 35 people on the planet.

It is a moment that invites comparisons, with his father and role model, whose life was cut short by assassins in 1991; with his iron-willed grandmother, assassinated seven years earlier, and even with his revered great-grandfather.

As he throws himself into one of India’s hottest political caldrons, many people are wondering whether this sincere but slightly diffident man is up to the task.

“Mafias and criminals are representing you now,” he said at a rally last week to launch the Congress campaign for next year’s state elections, appealing to young people to share his anger with the politicians who have made the state a byword for corruption and misrule. “Now your generation has to come up and fight against this.”

With some of the tragic mystique of the Kennedys and a touch of raw South Asian feudal power, the family name is certainly a draw. Thousands of people turned up to see him speak, and there had been a buzz of excitement as his helicopter came in to land, necks craning as the rotors threw up a swirling cloud of yellow dust.

But Gandhi lacks either the natural presence of Nehru or the oratorical skills of Indira — his well-meaning speech seemed to fizzle out in the hot sun, failing to draw laughter, anger or anything more than mild applause from his largely sympathetic audience.

‘A fairly sincere bloke’

Indeed, since he first became a member of Parliament seven years ago, Gandhi has cut a slightly withdrawn figure, preferring to tour villages and spend hours talking to the rural poor over making parliamentary speeches or supplying India’s ever-hungry news media with easy sound bites. His aides declined The Washington Post’s request for an interview.

He rejected an offer from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to take a ministerial position two years ago, and, so far at least, has rejected appeals from supporters and sycophants to take some of the weight off his mother’s shoulders by assuming the role of “working president” of Congress.

Sonia shocked the nation by turning down the prime minister job after leading Congress to victory in 2004, winning many Indians over with a culturally savvy act of “renunciation” even as she remained the country’s most powerful politician as president of her party and head of the ruling coalition government.

But her son’s unwillingness to grab the reins of power offered to him has had the opposite effect, winning him the derisory nickname of “the reluctant prince.”

Indeed, the sense that he lacks the fire in his belly to be a great leader leaves many Congress party workers yearning that his more charismatic, more spontaneous younger sister Priyanka would finally enter politics.

“Rahul lacks his sister Priyanka’s charisma, but he comes across as a fairly sincere bloke,” said columnist and novelist Shobhaa De. “Not terribly bright, but with his heart in the right place.”

After seven years in power, his Congress party is widely blamed for rampant corruption and rising inflation and, after so many incarnations over so many decades, the Nehru-Gandhi brand has lost much of its luster. Some pundits jibe that Rahul Gandhi has about as much value as “a post-dated check on a crashing bank.”

Learning from the poor

For two decades, the people of Uttar Pradesh have voted largely according to their caste and religious identities, and rejected the kind of catch-all secularism that Congress and the Gandhi family represent. In the process, the state has largely failed to enjoy the fruits of India’s economic boom.

Gandhi is trying to convince them that the time is right for a state government “for all of the people, by all the people,” a government that pulls Uttar Pradesh back into India’s economic mainstream. He is doing it by consciously evoking the memory of his ancestors, launching his campaign from Nehru’s old constituency, on the anniversary of his birth 122 years ago.

Should Gandhi deliver a decent electoral haul for Congress in Uttar Pradesh, he will inspire party workers around the country. “If he fails to deliver — in a dynastic party you don’t lose your position, but you do lose face,” said Yogendra Yadav, a social scientist and senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. “Even in dynasties, you have to earn respect. You have to earn enthusiasm from your own workers.”

Supporters argue that Gandhi’s apparent reticence reflects the fact that, unlike many Indian politicians, he has no thirst for power for its own sake. Organized and disciplined but no natural multi-tasker, he has been quietly working to democratize Congress from within by introducing elections for key posts in the party’s youth wing.

He makes much of the experience he gleans from touring India’s villages. His education — at Rollins College in Florida and Trinity College in Cambridge, England — and several years as a management consultant counts for nothing, he insists, compared with this chance to learn firsthand from the poor about their problems.

“I spend nights in their huts and take their bread; I drink the dirty water from their well and get sick,” he said at the Phulpur rally. “But unless I drink that water and fall sick, how can I know, how can anybody know, what lives they are leading?”

Opponents may mock him for his elitist background, even accusing him of using “special soap” to cleanse himself after these visits to lower-caste homes, but at Phulpur, his efforts to reinvent himself as a man of the people seemed to be paying off.

Many in the crowd said they appreciated his “simplicity” and “dedication.” Yet in the muted reaction to his speech, there were also signs of the battle he faces repairing the tarnished image of Congress around the country.

“Corruption and inflation are the main things we care about,” said Tapasya Diwarkar, a 24-year-old medical student, to murmurs of assent from people around her. “That’s why we don’t like politicians, and that’s why we weren’t cheering.”

denyers@washpost.com