Inside the mind of Rahul Gandhi

By M H Ahssan

Call it software politics. After buttons on the EVMs are pressed, data from the machines fed into the national network, votes dissected on 24x7 channels and the poll pundits proven wrong, the young man responsible for the grand old party’s near-decisive victory is sitting quietly on the backbench, showing no emotion.

He betrays neither the joy and relief of victory nor the strain of possible responsibilities in the future. The Cabinet position has been declined, at least for now. With the dust of the election battle settling, the party reins have been handed back to mother. So, what’s on Rahul Gandhi’s mind now? What has he been thinking the past couple of years, when he metamorphosed from dimpled poster-boy for dynasty to Congress’s campaigner-in-chief? How does he think?

Not politics so much perhaps, as management. Masters at Doon School, his father’s alma mater and his own from 1981 to 1983, remember him as a “quiet, shy boy”. One of the masters who tutored Rahul during his stay at the school’s Kashmir House recalls, “He left the school as quietly as he came. He was grandson of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, but he rarely talked about politics.”

Rahul went on to St Stephen’s College in Delhi, Harvard, Rollins College in Florida and finally Trinity College. He collected many degrees along the way and perhaps a philosophy of management as well. It was at Harvard that he studied under Michael E Porter whose ‘Five Forces Analysis’ — a business development strategy — seems to have influenced Rahul in a big way. Porter’s model analyses the forces “that affect a company’s ability to serve its customers and make a profit”. The theory insists that if an industry is attractive, every firm doesn’t have the same profitability. “Some firms are able to apply their core competences, business model or network to achieve a profit above the industry average”. Replace Porter’s ‘industry’ with politics and ‘firms’ with parties and the analysis works well in the jumble of Indian coalition politics.

It probably helps that Rahul has been employed in something other than Indian politics. After his Cambridge M Phil, he worked as a consultant with Porter’s Monitor Group in London for three years. That was where he honed the management and analytical skills that people now say with post-election hindsight make him a good politician. But Sam Pitroda, his father’s old colleague and head of the Technology Mission predicted this when Rahul entered politics in 2004: “He has worked under Michael Porter for four years...Rahul is methodical, analytical, mature and sincere... He is extremely intelligent and at ease with cyber technology...”

Rahul’s buddies and aides say he has transferred his management skills to the Indian countryside in the year-and-a-half that he has been on a ‘Discovery of India’ tour. Jitin Prasada, Congress MP, says, “Rahul has an innate belief in the strength of rural India. When British foreign secretary was taken to Amethi, it was not as was charged by rivals to mock the poor, but it was to show the strength of rural India. He goes out to villages, connects with people and sees the reality himself. And then he analyses and conceives ideas through that first-hand experience, not by closed-door ideating in Delhi. That is his originality”.

Fawning politicians and pundits alike admit Rahul’s way of thinking is clear from all that he has done at the grassroots in Amethi. “He has a vision for the future. Rahul always thinks and talks in long terms,” says Kalyan Singh Gandhi, AICC member from Rae Bareli and long-standing family confidante. Singh describes Rahul’s management philosophy seen at first hand. He created a network of workers across Amethi — 16 blocks, 160 nyaya panchayats, 750 gram sabhas and a samooh pramukh for a cluster of 50 homes. “He organized a camp for all the workers and they were trained by top management experts from Mumbai and abroad on how to reach out to people. The samooh pramukhs are supposed to look after the people all the and take care of all their needs — from water to pension to help in marriages”.

Now, Rahul plans to replicate the Amethi model, where he has 9,000 active party workers, across the country. But some say the plan is merely a marketing strategy. “It’s really credible the way the Congress marketed itself in the past two years. But, it’s just marketing. Where are the results for the people?” says Ranjan Chaudhary, a Dalit and IIM-Lucknow graduate who quit his MNC job in Melbourne to join Rahul’s core team in 2004. “He has many good ideas but no clarity on how to go about it,” says Chaudhary, who left Rahul’s team last year and contested a UP seat as a BJP candidate. “He has no place for emotions. It’s only management”.

True or not, the management guru is reaping rich dividends.