NEW DELHI: For about a week, something strange has been happening to the power supply in the remote village of Saraini, Uttar Pradesh -- unusually, the electricity is working, and not just for the odd hour here and there, but providing an unprecedented 24-hour service. The villagers dust off their televisions and sit down to enjoy the unfamiliar experience of watching the evening news.Something strange is also happening to the roads. Steamrollers appear from nowhere and labourers are rapidly smacking a new surface on to the pot-holed track. Locals comment wryly on how peculiar it is that the workers should be in such a hurry to finish, given the decades of neglect that have gone before.
A few days later, when officials from India's ruling Congress party arrive in their starched white suits, stringing up bunting along the road, these mysterious improvements to village life are explained. Sonia Gandhi, the Congress party leader and most powerful person in Indian politics, is to grace Saraini with her presence, and party workers want to ensure the villagers' main grievances are allayed before she arrives.
For two days, Sonia Gandhi, 59, the Italian-born heir to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, criss-crosses the impoverished rural landscape of her constituency of Rae Bareli campaigning for re-election. The fleet of vast, Indian-made, bullet-proof SUVs (bodyguards and their guns poking from the windows), followed by an ambulance, a jammer vehicle (blocking mobile phones) and busloads of police officers make such an extraordinary spectacle that children come running from the fields to stare.
The election is a family affair. As Sonia seeks votes in the south of the constituency, her son Rahul, 35 -- photogenic and quietly charming -- is finishing a gruelling 10-day road trip that takes him to 400 villages in the area. Later, her daughter, Priyanka, 34, beautiful, authoritative and adored in the region -- also comes to campaign on her mother's behalf.
Caught up in a very technical row over parliamentary conflict of interest, Sonia has chosen to resign and call a by-election in a seat so safe that there is no question of her losing. Nowhere is India's passion for the dynasty more fervent than in the Gandhi family constituency of Rae Bareli, in a part of this north Indian state which has been ruled by the clan for generations. The result is a foregone conclusion.
Her decision proves to be a political masterstroke. She wins with a landslide of support, taking 80 per cent of the vote -- 475,000 votes of the 590,000 cast; the other candidates all do so miserably that they lose their deposits. Crucially, the victory is announced on the same day as state election results in five important states across India. Nationwide, the Congress party fares badly, but it is this tiny, local Gandhi family triumph that occupies the news bulletins. Sonia Gandhi has pulled off a typically skilful piece of PR for her party.
Better still, the election provides a strategic launch pad for the next generation of the Family (the capital is usually audible in supporters' reverential tones). Voters and newspapers alike are thrilled with Rahul's performance. In the wake of victory, the advance of Rahul, the fifth generation of the dynasty, to the front line of Indian politics looks imminent. Headlines promise: 'Rahul Gandhi: Coming Soon!'
Few are surprised by his rise. For the past century, the Gandhi-Nehru family have had a controlling stake in India's destiny, three of them serving as Indian prime ministers. Their dynastic saga is intertwined with the nation's transformation. Their lives shaped and were shaped by India's journey from colonial rule to independence, from struggling developing world nation to emerging Asian superpower.
No Bollywood director has been foolhardy enough to tackle their epic story (though Monica Bellucci may soon star in a biopic about Sonia), but there is plenty of material to tempt the scriptwriter: alluring heroines and playboy sons, sibling rivalry and marital breakdown, political intrigue, racial tension and murder.
The Nehru-Gandhis have become expert in passing power on to the next generation. Sonia Gandhi is the unlikely inheritor of a political throne which has passed from the dynasty's patriarch, Motilal Nehru, an early Congress leader, to his son, Independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru, and later to his granddaughter, Indira, and then after her assassination on to his great-grandsons, first to the exuberant promoter of forced sterilisations, Sanjay, and then after his early death (crashing over Delhi in a stunt plane) to Rajiv, a quiet airline pilot and reluctant politician, before being thrust, forcibly, on to Sonia, after Rajiv's murder in 1991.
Sonia was shy, her Hindi was shaky, and she was still mourning her husband. She had no political training and had spent the past two decades bringing up her children and taking part-time classes in art restoration. Opponents said her Italian roots made her unsuitable for the job. But the party was adamant that, as a Gandhi, she was the only one who could unite the party. It was eight years before she agreed.
A day with the Gandhi campaign roadshow as it storms through the parched landscape of Uttar Pradesh demonstrates the success of her appointment. Sonia is an accidental politician, pushed to prominence by three family tragedies, but she has transformed herself into an immensely skilled leader. Her success rests on her family ties and she rarely misses an opportunity to remind voters of her heritage.
A bizarrely macabre poster campaign, dotted all over the constituency, rams home the point. On the left (in morbid black and white) are the stern faces of the Congress party's dead icons: Indira, Sanjay and Rajiv. In the centre, in garish paint, there is a portrait of Sonia, flanked to the right by her offspring Rahul and Priyanka, also in vibrant colours, smiling happily.
'Her standing anywhere in the country is unrivalled by anyone else in the party. When this lady travels anywhere, she carries an aura of 100 years of public service from one family,' says Mani Shankar Aiyar, a cabinet minister in the current government and former private secretary to Rajiv.
Congress party officials overstate the case somewhat when they promise there will be 'near-hysteria' on her arrival. There are a few crazy fanatics -- the man who has pedalled his bicycle rickshaw, plastered with pictures of the dynasty, for 500km from Meerut to catch sight of her, or the supporters who hand out leaflets expressing their devotion: 'Respected Madam, you are the light of Rae Bareli (UP)', 'Respected Madam, you are the moon and sun of the world.'
But most of the crowds who turn out to see Sonia come because they are curious. These are not loyal Congress party supporters (and in state elections, the Congress party has been flattened by a powerful, caste-based political movement). Their allegiance is personal -- to her dead relatives, to her children and to her. —Dawn/The Observer News Service
