RAHUL GANDHI

Son of former Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, grandson of Indira Gandhi and great grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru.

Rahul Gandhi (born 19 june 1970) is a Indian politician and member of the parliament of India representing the Amethi constituency. His political party is the Indian National Congress. He belongs to Nehru Family, the most prominent political family in India. He has been widely credited with Congress's big win in 2009 general elections. His tactics are game-changing: insisting on grassroots activism, building deep connections to rural India and trying to democratize the hierarchical Congress party itself. He turned down a cabinet post in the Manmohan Singh government and is concentrating on strengthening the party at the grassroots.

Career

Early career

Rahul Gandhi, after graduating worked with management guru, Michael Porter's management consulting firm, Monitor Group for three years. His colleagues at the firm had no idea who they were working with as he was using an assumed name. His reputation within the company was very impressive, in the words of one senior partner. He returned to India in late 2002 to run an engineering and technology outsouring firm in Mumbai.

Political career

In 2003, there was widespread media speculation about Rahul Gandhi's imminent entry into national politics, which he did not confirm. He appeared with his mother at public events and Congress meetings. He also traveled to Pakistan on a goodwill visit to watch the first cricket serier between the countries in 14 years in a One Day International with his sister Priyanka Gandhi.

Speculation heightened in January 2004 about his and his sister's possible entry into politics when they visited their father's former constituency of Amethi, which their mother held at the time. He refused to give a definitive response, stating "I am not averse to politics. I have not decided when I will enter politics and indeed, if I ever will." In March 2004, he announced his entry into politics by announcing that he would contest the May 2004 elections, standing for his father's former constituency of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh in the Lok Sabha. India's lower house of Parliament. Before that, his uncle Sanjay held the seat before a plane crash. The seat had been held by his mother until she transferred to the neighboring seat of Rae Bareilly. The Congress had been doing poorly in Uttar Pradesh, holding only 10 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state at the time. At the time, this move generated surprise among political commentators, who had regarded his sister Priyanka's being the more charismatic and likely to succeed. Party officials did not have a CV ready for the media; such was the surprise of his move. It generated speculation that the presence of a young member of India's most famous political family would reinvigorate the Congress party's political fortunes among India's youthful population In his first interview with foreign media, he portrayed himself as a uniter of the country and condemned "divisive" politics in India, saying that he would try to reduce caste and religious tensions. His candidacy was greeted with excitement by locals, who had a long standing affinity with the family's presence in the area, Politician of Indian National Congress. He won with a landslide majority, retaining the family stronghold with a margin of over 100,000 as the Congress unexpectedly defeated the ruling Bharatiya Janta Party. His campaign was directed by his younger sister, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. Till 2006 he held no other office and concentrated mainly on constituency issues and the politics of Uttar Pradesh, and it was widely speculated in the Indian and international press that Sonia Gandhi is trying to groom him for a chance to become a national-level Congress leader in the future.

In January 2006, at a convention of the Indian Naitional Congress in Hyderabad, thousands of party members asked for Gandhi to take a more prominent leadership role in the party and demanded that he address the delegates. He said "I appreciate and I am grateful for your feelings and support. I assure you I will not let you down", but asked for patience and declined to immediately seek a higher profile role.

Gandhi and his sister managed their mother's campaign for reelection to Rae Bareilly in 2006, which was won easily with a margin greater than 400,000 votes. He was a prominent figure in a high profile Congress campaign for the 2007 Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections; Congress, however, won only 22 seats with 8.53% of votes. The election saw the Bhujan Samaj Party, which represents low caste Indians, to become the first party to govern in its own right in Uttar Pradesh for 16 years. Rahul Gandhi was appointed a general secretary of the All India Congress Committee on 24 September 2007 in a reshuffle of the party secretariat. In the same reshuffle, he was also given charge of the Youth Congress and the National Students Union of India. In his attempt to prove himself as a youth leader in November 2008 he held interviews at his 12, Tughlak Lane residence in New Delhi to handpick at least 40 people who will make up the think-tank of the Indian Youth Congress (IYC), an organization that he has been keen to transform since he was appointed general secretary in September 2007.

2009 Elections.

In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, he retained his Amethi constituency by defeating his nearest rival by a margin of over 333,000 votes. In these elections congress is said to have revived itself in Uttar Pradesh by winning 21 out of the total 80 Lok Sabha seats and the majority of the credit for this turnaround is given to Rahul Gandhi. He spoke at 125 rallies across the country in six weeks. He is referred to as RG, in party circles.

Personal life

In 2004, he was reported to have been dating Veronica, an architect from Spain. The two met while at university.

Criticism

Rahul Gandhi's legal affairs team responded, when Newsweek alleged in late 2006 that he had not completed his degrees at Harvard and Cambridge or kept his job at the Monitor Group, they were slapped with a lgeal notice, following which they hastily retracted or qualified their earlier statements.

Rahul Gandhi counted the 1971 break-up of Pakistan among his family's "achievements". This statement invited criticism from several political parties in India, as well as from notable people in Pakistan including the Foreign Office spokesperson. Well-known historian Irfan Habibremarked that the comments were "...an insult to the Bangraldesh movement.

During the Uttar Pradesh election campaign in 2007 he said that "if anyone from the Gandhi-Nehru family had been active in politics then, the Babri Masjid would not have fallen". This was interpreted as an attack on P.V.Narsimha Rao, the Prime Minister during the demolition of the mosque in 1992. Gandhi's statement triggered a controversy with some members of BJP, the Samajwadi Party and the Left dubbing him as both "anti-Hindu" and "anti-Muslim". His remarks on freedom fighters and the Nehru-Gandhi family have been criticized by BJP leader Venkaiah Naidu who asked "Will the Gandhi family take responsibility for imposition of emergency?"

In late 2008, an apparent snub to Rahul Gandhi revealed the power wielded by him. Gandhi was prevented from using the auditorium at the Chandra Shekhar Azad Agriculture University to address students, as a result of political manipulation by the Chief Minister Ms. Mayawati. Subsequently, the Vice-Chancellor of the university, V.K. Suri, was ousted by the Governor Shri T.V. Rajeswar (who is also the Chancellor), a Gandhi family supporter and appointer of Mr. Suri. The incident was cited as evidence of the politicization of education, and a cartoon in the Times of India by Ajit Ninan went: "Dynasty related questions are answered by Rahulji’s foot soldiers."

His admission to St Stephen's College was controversial as he was admitted on the basis of his abilities as a competitive pistol shooter, which was disputed. He left the College in 1990, after one year of education.

His statement that during his year-long stay at his college St Stephen, students who asked questions in class “were looked down upon” evoked a strict denial from his college. He said that when he was studying at St Stephen’s College, asking a question was not (perceived to be) good in our class and one was looked down upon if you asked too many questions. Teachers at the college said Gandhi’s statement could at best be “his personal experience” and not a ground for generalization of the academic environment at St Stephen’s.

In January 2009 he was severely criticized for the "Poverty Tourism Tour," which he had with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, in a village near Amethi, his parliamentary constituency in Uttar Pradesh. It was further considered as "greatest diplomatic disaster" because of Milliband unsolicited advice on terrorism and Pakistan and the way he conducted himself in his closed-door meetings with Mr. Mukherjee and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

NEW DELHI: The national capital's premier educational institution, St Stephen's College, took serious umbrage to Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi's claim that during his year-long stay there, students who asked questions in class "were looked down upon”. The MP from Amethi said on Tuesday, "When I was studying at St Stephen's College, asking a question was not (perceived to be) good in our class. You were looked down upon if you asked too many questions." Gandhi, who was addressing students at a university in Srinagar, took a dig at his alma mater to differentiate between the Indian higher education system and that of the United States and England. Teachers at the college said Gandhi's statement could at best be "his personal experience" and not a ground for generalization of the academic environment at St Stephen's. "What Mr. Gandhi said is his personal experience and there's no reason to believe otherwise. It can certainly not be correct to make such a generalization about the overall academic environment at the college," said Valson Thampu, principal. Gandhi was enrolled in the college in 1989 in the History (Hons) course and was in the institution for a year. About his conduct during his stay, Thampu said, "Though I didn't teach him, I always found him to be exceptionally well behaved and he conducted himself with humility." However, a faculty member at the college who requested anonymity pointed out, "There are nearly 36 clubs and forums at the college which promote a liberal culture. The Informal Discussions Group allows students from all courses to discuss varied issues. But during his year-long stay at the college, Rahul hardly participated in any of these forums." Thampu however attributed Gandhi's absence from these activities to his VIP status. "Unfortunately, being the son of a VIP, there were always issues of security and an array of other matters that may have restricted his participation in daily activities of the institution." Interestingly, Thampu hailed Gandhi's call for overhauling the higher education system in the country. "I'm grateful to him for raising the pertinent issue of overhauling the higher education system in the country and bringing it at par with foreign institutions like Stanford or Oxford. I wish the leader along with other policy makers calls for a national debate on the issue," Thampu said. Thampu added, "The approach towards higher education in our country today is just to cover the syllabus. Simply completing the syllabus cannot be equated with good education. Liberal discussions on an array of issues and a system that would groom a student into a self-dependent, confident individual is the need of today."