Being two Rahul Gandhis

Meanwhile in Delhi

Rahul Gandhi's first political pow-wow as Congress general secretary in charge of youth organisations was a marvelous exercise in dialing a wrong number. Rahul was all business and ideation. The delegates representing Youth Congress and NSUI units from around the country were freeloaders with little to offer but blind subservience to the young master. In a party that's degenerated into a family concern, there's only one motto: to get to the top, kiss arse. Rahul began with a little speech about changing the culture. No sycophancy, please.

Just "work, work and work". Not many grasped the Rahul concept of modern management. One hapless delegate came prepared with flowery words of praise. Rahul cut him short after two sentences and ignored him for the rest of the meet. He ordered the national office bearers out of the front rows. I see you every day, he told them and asked the backbenchers to come up instead. And during the lunch break, he sat on the ground, like one of the boys, and ate food. All very egalitarian and democratic, but also bewildering. The delegates didn't know what to make of it while Rahul may have to learn the hard way, like his father Rajiv, that the Congress is probably too old to try new tricks.

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Any illusions about Rahul being one of the guys vanished at the cricket match he organized between the YC and NSUI delegates at the end of the two-day meet. The Gandhi scion fielded in the slips for about half an hour and then rushed off to 10 Janpath for a private lunch his mother hosted for the visiting Netherlands monarch, Queen Beatrix, and her family.

It was a quiet affair with a select guest list that included Priyanka Vadra and her husband Robert. Ambika Soni was the minister-in-waiting who made the arrangements and organised the food. That's Rahul's double life. One minute, he's rubbing shoulders with the hoi polloi. The next, he's off to shake hands with European royalty and China's Hu Jintao, arguably one of the most influential world leaders today.

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Among the many sources from which Sonia Gandhi took inputs for her current visit to China was the CPI(M). Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma, who accompanied Sonia to Beijing, met Sitaram Yechury for his thoughts on the forthcoming interaction between the Congress boss and the newly elected Chinese leadership.

It was an interesting move in the context of the row over the Indo-US nuclear deal and allegations of Chinese lobbying to kill the agreement through the CPI(M). Yechury told Sharma that the delegation must discuss the nuclear deal with the Chinese and keep them in the loop on the government's talks with other member nations of the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

The PM's special envoy Shyam Saran has traveled to almost all the 45 NSG countries except China to lobby for a waiver for India to buy nuclear fuel and technology. Now let's see what assurances Sonia brings back from Beijing.

TAILPIECE
Since CPI leader AB Bardhan refuses to travel to television studios for talk shows, the channels come to him and proceed to turn his sparsely furnished office upside down to make it presentable for TV. Bardhan has to wait in another room during the rearrangement. It happened again last week, except this team took a little longer than others. An exasperated Bardhan finally snapped at the young girl in charge, "Are you a journalist or an interior decorator?''

Email: a_jerath@dnaindia.net