The Quiet Revolutionary

Over the past three years he has worked hard to acquaint himself with poor, rural India by making numerous visits to remote, neglected villages, where he would listen to locals' complaints while sitting cross-legged on their dirt floors, sharing their meals and sometimes even sleeping in their homes. On occasion he would lead villagers to government officials to demand better services or organize sit-ins in dusty towns to highlight the plight of the poor. His "discovery of India" tour (a riff on Nehru's book of the same name) was dismissed by the media and scorned by his opponents, one of whom referred to Rahul as an "aquarium fish." Yet Rahul persisted, often making unnoticed trips to remote tribes, panicking his security detail. Calculated or not, such moves are extremely rare for a politician of Gandhi's stature in India, where most leaders prefer to travel in air-conditioned comfort.

Rahul's current views on the economy seem to owe to these tours. Broadly speaking, he is pro-market, owing in part to his time at Monitor, but he insists that growth should provide opportunities for the poor. "What is the difference between a rich man and a poor man?" he liked to ask at campaign rallies. "Opportunity!" Rahul argues that the human talent in India's poorest states is as good as anywhere else and that it's the government's fault that these regions remain impoverished. He also believes in economic reform. Rahul has said that the current global financial crisis is a "short-term disruption" and large countries like India and China can benefit in the long run if they position themselves properly. But he wants "inclusive growth," and has supported job guarantees for the rural poor and loan waivers to farmers—measures derided by market reformers but that appear to have had strong political benefits for Congress and to have shielded India's rural sector from the worst of the current crisis. Rahul is also known to support the growing U.S.-India alliance and is said to speak well of George W. Bush in private for pushing it through.

Those who know Rahul say he is levelheaded and unruffled, draws inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi (no relation) and, like his sister, Priyanka, takes an interest in Buddhism and has attended teachings by the Dalai Lama. He meticulously seeks out different points of view before coming to a decision. He is a teetotaler who once favored fast cars but whose only apparent vice now is a fondness for Indian sweets. The siblings are close ("There is no one closer to me than my sister [Priyanka]," he recently told a questioner). For a while, he was known to be dating an attractive Spanish architect, but he is now India's most eligible bachelor and appears in no hurry to change that status.

In a sense, given the magnitude of the job he's assigned himself, it's no wonder that Rahul turned down a cabinet post. The work he has in mind involves enlisting 10 million young people into the party's youth wing and holding democratic elections to produce new leaders from among them. He has already managed to sign up some 1.5 million youngsters in three opposition-ruled states—Punjab, Gujarat and Uttarakhand—to join the Youth Congress. All this has helped Rahul construct himself as an agent of radical change. "His strategy of positioning himself as an outsider seems a masterstroke," says Mehta, the New Delhi analyst. The irony, of course, is that in seeking to make the Congress Party more democratic, Rahul is working against the legacy of his own grandmother, who suspended internal party elections in the mid-1970s, allowing her to chose the party's regional leaders herself—a process most experts believe helped turn Congress from a grassroots, vibrant party into a court full of fawning retainers.

Still, the seductions of power remain strong—indeed, this may be the biggest obstacle Gandhi will face. "Rahul has a unique role to play in defining India's political destiny over the coming decades," says Ramesh Ramanathan, a former Citibank senior manager who gave up a flourishing career in Europe in his mid-30s to start a Bangalore nonprofit that promotes government accountability and who now works as an adviser to the government on urban renewal. "Thousands of ambitious people will gather around him like moths around a lamp to feed their own careers." Rahul's success will depend on how well he avoids the trap of hubris, so common among Congress leaders, and how well he handles the inevitable flatterers and hangers-on. "So far he has been careful not to let any [such clique] grow around him," says Mehta. "He seems to allow only those around him who have no ax to grind."

There are other obstacles. Congress remains extremely resistant to any moves that would weaken its party grandees. Regional governments will not eagerly make room for newcomers at the expense of favored castes and clients. The Indian bureaucracy has a long way to go before it begins actually serving the people rather than obstructing their path. Big business will also be happy to slow down certain reforms—in order to slow down competition—or guide them in ways that let it game the market.

Still, the process Rahul Gandhi has unleashed has the potential to turn India into a shining example of how to manage a successful economy and a successful democracy in a large, heterogeneous country. It's true that he faces enormous challenges. Yet he also enjoys enormous advantages—especially his family name and his rising popularity. This stature will only grow if Rahul manages to remain uncorrupted. Of course, it will be all too easy for him to succumb to the status quo, to do just well enough to achieve high office and then to stop fighting. But that would be a tragic waste of India's greatest hope in a very long time.

© 2009