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The last time I joined Rahul Gandhi on the campaign trail, he was on a mission to rejuvenate his party. It was April 2009, and the scion of Asia’s foremost political dynasty was spearheading the Congress party’s campaign for a general election. After an oddly short and uninspiring speech at a rally in the northern state of Punjab, he spoke with a handful of us reporters about his main focus at the time—a drive to bring new talent into Congress, which was then in power.
“The youth in India expect change in politics,” Mr Gandhi, then 38, told us. With him at the rally were five Congress candidates from Punjab, all under 41. Four were from the party's youth wing, for which he had just overseen the first fully democratic elections. He was conscious of the tension between his status as party heir and his talk of meritocracy. But his passion seemed genuine. “You’re not going to see the effects of this process in three months, you’re going to see the effects in five years or seven years,” he said.
Fifteen years on, I got to see Mr Gandhi in action again as he geared up for another general election, which starts on April 19th. One thing that became clear when I trailed him for a series of rallies and walkabouts in western India is that he has matured as a politician. He speaks more forcefully now and in more fluent Hindi. He seems more comfortable in front of a crowd. And he genuinely seems to connect with voters, especially in smaller groups, in a way that he rarely did earlier in his career.
But thinking back to that Punjab rally, it is striking too that so few of the “young guns” he helped to promote are still by his side. Since Congress lost power in 2014, many of its rising stars have either left politics or defected to rivals, especially the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP. And since the last general election, in 2019, the exodus has broadened, with about 25 senior figures leaving Congress.
Congress blames India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, accusing him of using tax and investigative agencies to coerce opponents into switching sides (an allegation the government denies). Some defectors have no doubt been motivated by personal gain—political or financial. But many whom I have met (and some younger Congress figures who remain) say they have long since lost faith in Mr Gandhi’s commitment to elevate new blood and challenge the old guard of family loyalists that still surrounds his mother, Sonia.
Mr Gandhi, who is not the leader of Congress but is still its most prominent campaigner (and presumed heir), faces many challenges in the years ahead. India’s political environment is undeniably more hostile to the opposition than at any time since his grandmother, Indira, suspended civil liberties during the Emergency of 1975-77. But as I write
in this week’s issue,
if he is to revive his party’s fortunes, he needs to tackle several long-running internal problems. And much like in 2009, one of the most pressing is that conundrum of how to encourage young talent in a party still dominated by a single family. | 
