JAIPUR, India — Scalded by spontaneous anti-rape and corruption protests near the seat of government in New Delhi, India's ageing leaders are scrambling to win over an angry and influential young urban population ahead of elections due to be held by early next year. The Congress Leadership's answer to this evolving issue is Rahul Gandhi, who seeks to woo ‘young and impatient India'. In his first address, the heir to India's Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, said Sunday he would work to transform the country by decentralizing power and targeting the nation's penchant for elitism. Rahul was speaking after he was elevated to the governing Congress party's No. 2 post on Saturday. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, 80, and Sonia Gandhi, the 66-year-old leader of the ruling Congress party, grappled with terms like “flash mob” and “Twitter” at a brainstorming meeting this weekend that focused on the new generation and growing social media. About two thirds of India's 1.2 billion people are under 35 and the population is shifting to cities, eroding political parties' traditional dependence on the rural poor. Looking weary after nine years in coalition government, the Congress leadership is widely seen as aloof and out of touch. The meeting, the first of its kind in a decade, was the party's attempt to adapt to fast-changing demographics as it prepares to contest for a third consecutive term. Rahul's career embodies Congress' reliance on the Gandhi family name, but the man widely expected to be the party's candidate for prime minister in next year's elections on Sunday condemned elitism as “the tragedy of India” and vowed to work to expand access to power for ordinary people. “For me, the Congress party is my life. The people of India are my life and I will fight for them,” Gandhi, a 42-year-old lawmaker, said in his acceptance speech Sunday in the western Indian city of Jaipur. Reflecting on his eight years while working for the party organization, Rahul Ganhi said India's governmental system was struck in the past and the answer lay in completely transforming it. “A handful of people control the entire political space,” he said to cheering party workers. “It doesn't matter how much wisdom you have. If you don't have position, you have nothing. That's the tragedy of India,” he said. Rahul Gandhi also said many Indian youths are angry because they have been excluded from the political class. “We only empower people at the top of the system. We don't believe in empowering all the way to the bottom,” he said. He said change could be possible only if those in power started respecting and empowering people for their knowledge and skills. “All the public systems — administration, justice, education and political — are designed to keep people with knowledge out,” he said. Such a system promotes mediocrity, he added. However, opposition parties are already seizing on the fast political rise of Rahul Gandhi — the son, grandson and great-grandson of Indian prime ministers — to brand Congress as nepotistic and elitist. Arun Jaitley, a leader of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, said Rahul's elevation in the party was a move to convert the world's largest democracy into a dynastic one. Jaitley said the leader of his party was decided on the basis of ability, not lineage. — Agencies
