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| Nehru-Gandhi dynasty ... a wall painting of Sonia and daughter Priyanka. |
India's first family must adjust to new political era:
Gandhis should elsewhere, US
SONIA GANDHI was back in India and back at work this week.
But she has returned to an India that has changed, subtly but significantly, from the one she left.
The most powerful woman in the world's largest democracy spent five weeks out of the country being treated overseas for an undisclosed condition.
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The first anything was known publicly of her illness was through a vague statement issued after she left.
Her party and family refused to entertain any inquiries into her condition beyond that surgery had been ''successful'', and that she was out of intensive care and recovering well.
Rumours that she was being treated for cancer at New York's Sloan-Kettering Centre have not been dignified with any answer at all.
This is how it has always been. The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, provider of prime ministers and considered to be property of the country by many in India, fiercely guards its privacy whenever it can.
When the health of Jawaharlal Nehru, the primogenitor of the Gandhi dynasty, deteriorated towards the end of his life, its seriousness was played down, his wan appearance put down to stress of the then war with China.
In contrast, when the current Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, underwent heart surgery two years ago, his operation and recovery was covered in forensic detail. But while it has previously been accepted for the Gandhis to keep matters of health in-house, it seems not the case now. There is a growing clamour for a new era of openness from India's first family.
Indians don't expect the comprehensive formality of American presidential physicals, nor particularly want the tick-by-tick convalescent updates of a Kevin Rudd, but, from the leaders of their raucous democracy, they expect more transparency than they feel they are getting.
''Ms Gandhi is the head of the largest political party in the country … therefore her health is undoubtedly of public concern,'' theMail Today opined this week.
''The party needs to inform the people, as well as its own cadre, as to whether Ms Gandhi's health will permit her to be as active on the political scene as she has been over the last 13 years.''
The new focus on Sonia, has served, also, to underline the shifting ground under the feet of the whole family, not just its matriarch. Gandhis rarely attract boos in this country.
But Rahul, the scion on whom hope for the family's, and the country's, future has been heaped, found himself the target of outright hostility last week when he visited in hospital those who had been injured in the bomb blast outside the Delhi High Court. His visit lasted less than 20 minutes, Indian media reported, after families of the victims turned on him, frustrated his party had not done more to address India's security concerns.
''Show some shame,'' people chanted, and told the man still most likely to be India's next prime minister to ''not play politics with terrorism''.
This is unfamiliar territory for the 42-year-old.
For the first seven years of his political life, Rahul enjoyed popular and media indulgence. The crown of ''one most likely'' sat lightly on him, and the excited babble was of his ''potential''.
Now, the question is of realisation. While Rahul's recentpadyatra (pilgrimage) through the former Congress heartland of Uttar Pradesh fighting land rights issues for farmers captured media attention, polling suggests it failed to re-energise the voters his party needs to win back the state in next year's elections.
As well, in his mother's absence, and with India gripped by the anti-corruption hunger strike of Anna Hazare, Rahul has faltered badly.
His last-minute intervention in the stand-off, in the form of a speech to Parliament describing the protest as a ''tactical incursion'' attacking India's democracy, failed, and Hazare was able to force the Indian government into a humiliating backdown. These have not been the first political missteps, and in the corridors that matter in Delhi, they have fed rumblings that Congress might have backed the wrong horse.
A 2007 cable from the US Embassy in Delhi questioned Rahul's political savvy and asked whether the Gandhis should look elsewhere
''Congress insiders complain that he [Rahul Gandhi] is a neophyte who does not have what it takes become prime minister,'' then US charge d'affaires Geoffrey Pyatt wrote.
''Their hopes have now shifted to yet another member of the Nehru dynasty, Rahul's sister Priyanka, as they await her entry into politics.''
Rahul's younger sister has long been spoken of as the brightest of the next generation, despite avowedly shunning a career in politics.
But she appeared, without notice or fanfare, in the Parliament's visitor's gallery for her brother's recent speech.
Sporting a new haircut that makes her look uncannily like her grandmother, the former prime minister Indira Gandhi, Priyanka has changed the political landscape again, simply by turning up.
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