Word: rahul
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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More than in most countries, politics in India is about family. It is not unsual for wives to succeed husbands in office. Or sons or daughters take over from their fathers in states ruled liked fiefdoms. So, many people smirked and rolled their eyes earlier this year when Rahul Gandhi, a rising star in the ruling Congress Party, proclaimed his commitment to making sure merit and internal democracy were recognized in his party. After all, Gandhi's mother is the head of the party - and his father, grandmother and great-grandfather all Prime Ministers. (See a pictorial history...
...Congress Party will decide on the next chief minister after a seven-day mourning period ends. The party president Sonia Gandhi (Rahul's mother) must now choose whether to make a point in favor of experience and against dynastic succession. It is instructive to remember that of the 80 ministers in the present Congress-led coalition at the centre, 15 have close ties to political families. In the Congress' previous term, 10 ministers' parents were either current or former chief ministers. Yet, people voted for stability and performance and brought the Congress back to power. "What people want more...
...followed every twist and turn of the five weeks of voting that just ended in India, during which 415 million voters in megacities, small towns and tiny villages came together to elect a new government. I tagged along at one of Rahul Gandhi's campaign rallies, and watched his cousin Varun's inflammatory speeches on YouTube. I calculated the anti-incumbency factor and tracked the post-Mumbai-attacks backlash vote. Counting day - a holiday in India - was dramatic. By the afternoon of May 16, the alliance led by the Congress Party, which had been expected to squeak through...
...after nearly 62 years as an independent nation, India is still not getting enough real change from its exercise of democracy. Indira Gandhi ran on the slogan "Garibi Hatao" (Abolish Poverty) in 1971. Her Congress Party, led by her daughter-in-law Sonia and grandson Rahul, is promising the same thing 38 years later, though less poetically ("Inclusive Growth"). And yet in Rae Bareli and Amethi, the two constituencies that the Gandhi family has represented almost without interruption, literacy is below the national average, less than 40% of villages have electricity and most of the roads are unpaved. The Congress...
...Image Makeover the concerns of young voters are complicated and deeply felt, but so far, India's two main parties, the centrist Congress Party and the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), are addressing them only superficially. For Congress, that means promoting 38-year-old Rahul Gandhi as its most visible public face. Boyishly handsome and educated abroad, Gandhi has made it his mission to bring more young people into positions of power. He has pledged to hold elections for the leadership of the Congress youth wing within two years, and pushed the party to field more candidates under...