India’s first family find nation needs real leadership

“Where is he now?” said Manish Kumar Singh, a protesting 42-year-old state employee protesting earlier this week outside the jail holding activist Anna Hazare, reflecting a sense of leadership vacuum.

“If Rahul is called the crown prince of Congress, he should come out and take up his responsibilities.”

Only a fortnight before the arrest of self-styled Gandhian activist Mr Hazare and then a U-turn to release him, an undisclosed illness of Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi had led her to nominate her son to take charge.

It coincided with India’s most widespread and spontaneous social demonstrations in decades, leading to more than 2,600 peaceful protesters being arrested in Delhi alone, and the worst-ever crisis to face the Congress government now in its second term.

But since Mr Gandhi returned from visiting his ailing mother in the United States on Sunday, the 41-year-old heir to the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty that has run India for most of its post-independence era has not said a word in public and may have been sidelined in government.

It underscores what may be an unstable succession to Mrs Gandhi, India’s most powerful politician, who has run the country from behind the scenes since handing the post of prime minister to economist Manmohan Singh in 2004.

“The complete incoherence of government strategy is not something that he [Rahul Gandhi] can distance himself from,” said political analyst Swapan Dasgupta. “The dynasty may be the glue that holds Congress together but there are times when events just overtake you and you become an election liability.”

For seven years Mrs Gandhi has provided the strategy for the Congress-led coalition, leaving day-to-day running in the hands of her ministers but providing the overall, pro-poor and often populist direction of the left-of-centre national party.

The widow of assassinated prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and daughter-in-law of assassinated prime minister Indira Gandhi, she was the designated – if reluctant – successor, winning two successive general elections in 2004 and 2009.

For years Rahul has been groomed, hidden from the limelight, as Sonia’s successor.

While he has avoided government posts, the Congress youth leader has travelled across India, staying in poor hamlets and preaching the cause of the poor and joining protests for farmer land rights.

Criticised as too young, he grew a beard. Criticised as too lightweight, he met with intellectuals and economists, attended business conferences and was photographed with international figures such as Bill Gates.

But the sudden announcement his mother had handed reins to a quartet including her son threw him into leadership of a party that is as notoriously bureaucratic as any ministry.

Returning from visiting his mother, he attended government meetings before the arrest of Mr Hazare – a detention that proved a costly political mistake – but he also may have been key in persuading the government to release Hazare. It was a sign that Mr Gandhi was not fully in control, allowing hardliners such as home minister Palaniappan Chidambaram to crack down on protesters.

“Rahul was catapulted to leadership even faster than he imagined. And to that extent he was not ready,” said Siddharth Varadarajan, editor of the Hindu newspaper.

“He seems to be far more aware of the political implications than ministers like Chidambaram,” said Mr Varadarajan. “But he has always been reluctant to use his position to second guess the government.”

Mr Gandhi also appears to have had little control over his own spokesmen, who inflated the crisis by claiming Mr Hazare and his followers had fascist and anarchist links and that the US had a hand in driving the protests.

When Mr Singh spoke to parliament over the crisis, Mr Gandhi, an MP, sat stone-faced, silent and with his arms folded.

But even though he appeared not to agree with the government, he has failed to take matters in his own hands.