The Grooming of Rahul Gandhi

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Letter From

Letter From New Delhi: India’s Myopic Opposition

Samanth Subramanian

The BJP's Hindu nationalism may have won it votes in the past, but the party now faces an identity crisis that is imperiling its future.

The problems besieging Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are legion. Several key players in his United Progressive Alliance coalition are embroiled in high-profile corruption scandals. Despite hiking interest rates repeatedly, his government cannot contain runaway inflation, which now tops ten percent. And terrorists have struck New Delhi twice this year, killing dozens and giving ordinary Indians the impression that their government can't keep them safe. On top of all this, Singh seems to have little fight left in him: at 79 years old, he is reportedly exhausted by the challenges of maintaining unity over a fractious coalition and of administering even the most rudimentary elements of India's relationship with its neighbors.

This would seem to be the ideal moment for the opposition to pounce. But so far, at least, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has offered no viable alternatives. Instead, the BJP has tended to stick to the sidelines and carp about Singh's shortcomings. The party seems adrift: L. K. Advani, the BJP stalwart and former deputy prime minister, recently said that he has no interest in serving as prime minister, and Narendra Modi -- chief minister of Gujarat and a possible contender for party leader -- is unlikely to draw a national following because of his alleged involvement in an anti-Muslim pogrom that occurred under his watch almost a decade ago.

The country, frustrated with Singh's ineffectiveness, is looking to the leader who will take Singh's place when he finishes his term in two years, and they are turning toward Rahul Gandhi. Gandhi is the son of Sonia Gandhi, the Congress Party's reclusive leader and the widow of Rajiv Gandhi, the former prime minister who was assassinated in 1991. (Rajiv himself was the son of Indira Gandhi, who was killed in 1984.) Since 2004, Rahul, who studied at Harvard and at Trinity College, Cambridge, has been tailored for higher office by Congress Party grandees. But Rahul, 41, is untested and rough around the edges: though he assumed the position of a general secretary of the All India Congress Committee four years ago, he has little to show in terms of concrete party accomplishments. But there is little doubt in most minds that, given the paucity of other options, Rahul will get the top job when Singh retires. Not only does he seem destined to inherit a political mess; it remains to be seen whether two years will prove long enough to groom the next ruler of the world's largest democracy.

Singh seems to be making the job of his successor more difficult by the day. The prime minister's power base has been dissolving thanks to a string of corruption scandals that he has seemed unable to deal with. Indeed, he failed to rein in recalcitrant members of both his party and his cabinet until they backed him into a corner. Public outrage and elite disgust reached such a fever pitch last November that Singh finally demanded the resignation of his telecommunications minister, Andimuthu Raja, who was accused of having auctioned cell phone frequencies at throwaway prices to incompetent operators. Singh's delay in seeking Raja's resignation led to a spate of accusations that he was incapable of stemming the rot inside his Cabinet. Then Suresh Kalmadi, chief organizer of the October 2010 Commonwealth Games, was ousted amid stories of widespread cost overruns and procurement irregularities. In both cases, Singh waited to step into the fray until public frustration had reached a critical level. No wonder that the long-standing anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare was able to seize the public imagination with antigovernment demonstrations in July.

The prime minister has been bumbling abroad, too. In late September, a much-vaunted visit to Bangladesh designed to improve ties with a key neighbor ended in failure. The problem was that Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of the Indian state of West Bengal, which abuts Bangladesh, refused to sign a bilateral water accord that Singh had touted as the centerpiece of his visit. Banerjee had good reason for her recalcitrance -- the accord had the potential to harm agriculture in the southern part of her state -- but the fact that her rejection took Singh by surprise indicates that he is having a very difficult time navigating even the basic protocols of the office.

Then there are the Gandhis. Sonia Gandhi is widely believed to wield disproportionate power over the government and the nonconfrontational prime minister. But she is reportedly suffering from cancer, and she is running out of time to pave the way for her son. So far she has attempted to prepare him by handing over political authority within the party while she was away for treatment in the United States; she also handed him the unsavory task of negotiating with the anti-corruption activist Hazare. 

Yet Rahul faces plenty more obstacles. The first is how to boost his political standing among party members. In a party known for political sycophancy and dependent on the name recognition of the Gandhi family, few party notables are ready to openly challenge his rise. In public, they will nod at his ascendancy. In taking on more party duties, Rahul is wading into controversial issues, such as land acquisition for industrial projects, but it remains to be seen if such high-profile efforts will deliver more votes to any of these Congress members.