Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
there was 'no governance' in the state of Bihar, which was embarrassing since the state had
been under direct rule by the Congress-led central government since earlier in the year. He
had also said that he did what he liked, despite his mother's views, and appeared to boast
(probably flippantly) that he could have been prime minister when he was 25. The
Tehelka
story revealed, I wrote, 'a straight-talking, sometimes naive, young man, with firm views
and ambitions'. He had said his idea of politics was 'very different from what is being done
now'. In the 2004 election campaign his advisers had kept him as quiet and out of the pub-
lic eye as possible, fearing, as he put it, that 'every time I want to do something... it may
go wrong'. The Congress insisted the Tehelka story was based on an un-taped 'background
chat'.
A few weeks later, I was introduced to Sonia Gandhi at a
Hindustan Times
conference
dinner and mentioned I had written an
Economist
piece on Rahul Gandhi, and that I wished
I had been able to talk to him. 'Not a very good piece,' came her instant reply, which was
remarkable because she'd had no idea that she would meet the (anonymous) author. She
said she was unhappy that I had failed to state that the
Tehelka
article was not based on an
interview (which I had in fact indicated). She showed more interest in that negative point
than in taking the conversation further or suggesting a meeting.
What the family does encourage - or at least makes no effort to stop - are vast spreads
of large advertisements placed in newspapers by government ministries at taxpayers' ex-
pense to mark various family anniversaries. On Rajiv Gandhi's 69th birth anniversary on
20 August 2013, there were nine half-page advertisements and three full pages just in the
Delhi edition of
The Indian Express
celebrating his birth, two of them also marking the
launch for a Sonia Gandhi promoted food security programme that day. The previous year,
on 21 May, named Anti Terrorism Day to mark Rajiv Gandhi's assassination in 1991, ad-
vertisements remembering and praising him included 5 3/4pages in the
Hindustan Times
, 5
in
The Times of India
, 4 in
The Hindu
and 3 1/2 in
The Indian Express
. Analysis on a me-
dia blog,
Sans Serif,
showed that Jawaharlal Nehru's birth anniversary in November 2011
was marked by 58 government advertisements covering 26 1/4 pages in 12 English news-
papers.
18
Reluctant Rahul
Sonia Gandhi's central political importance was demonstrated by the UPA government's
erratic behaviour while she was away ill, especially on two key issues - the Anna Hazare
anti-corruption movement and an on-going telecom scandal. Manmohan Singh failed to
seize the opportunity to exert the authority that should have gone with his job, and Rahul
Gandhi equally failed to rise to the challenge as heir apparent. Other key politicians such
