Rahul Gandhi, the scion of India’s most fabled political dynasty, will within weeks be crowned leader of the Congress party, handing him a freer rein to prove if he can mount a credible challenge to the dominance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The great-grandson of India’s founding prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, has struggled to convince voters – and many in his party – that he is leadership material, especially after a drubbing in the 2014 general election.
Modi’s depiction of the 47-year-old as an undeserving “prince” has helped sideline Gandhi since the last national vote, during which time Congress has suffered some of its worst ever local election results.
But this year the economy has stumbled, and Congress politicians hope a round of state elections, beginning in Modi’s home state of Gujarat, offer them – and their leader – a shot at revival ahead of the next national poll in 2019.
Gandhi will soon take over as Congress president from his 70-year-old mother, Sonia Gandhi, a symbolic promotion that three Congress officials said they hoped would free his hand to shift the narrative from a clash of personalities – which Modi has so far resoundingly won – to a debate about policies.
“You will see many changes and every change will be a reaffirmation of what Congress’s core beliefs are,” said party MP and senior leader Jyotiraditya Scindia, who works closely with Rahul Gandhi.
“The right time has come to strike a chord with the masses against Modi’s governance style, and we will not miss it.”
Congress insiders acknowledge their leader has sometimes made it easy for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to question his commitment to politics.
“The key problem with Rahul Gandhi has been his lack of consistency,” said a senior party figure, who declined to be identified. “He frequently takes a break after few roadshows and it is this inconsistency that has been a huge issue.”
But Congress officials say Gandhi has recently been finding his stride criticising Modi for failing to create jobs, while the party has won a handful of recent by-elections.
Gandhi is traversing Gujarat, the western state where Modi made his name, to fire up his party workers.
He has ditched some of the party rallies for one-on-one meetings with trade unions, dairy workers and small traders – a traditional Modi powerbase that has been hit hard by recent economic reforms championed by the prime minister. Modi has taken notice.
Last week he told workers from his Hindu nationalist BJP that the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty would “destroy Gujarat”.
His party president, recently dispatched to the Gandhi family heartland in northern India, said this month that Gandhi needed to swap his “Italian” glasses for “Gujarati” spectacles to see the economic development the BJP had brought to the region, in a jibe at his Italian-born mother’s roots.
“BJP would love it to be a war of personalities. Congress has to frame it as a war of two different approaches, even ideologies,” said Sandeep Shastri, a political scientist and Congress expert at Jain University.
Gandhi, who rarely talks to the media, declined a Reuters interview request.