Priyanka Gandhi Vadra
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Biographical detail
As in 2019, Jan
January 24, 2019, The Times of India
From: January 24, 2019: The Times of India
From: January 24, 2019: The Times of India
After over a decade of will-she-won’t-she, Rahul Gandhi’s sister enters politics as Cong gen secy overseeing eastern UP, which includes PM Modi’s Varanasi LS seat
100 Yrs After Motilal First Became Cong President, His Great-Great-Granddaughter Gets Party Post
In a surprise move that spices up the poll broth ahead of Lok Sabha elections, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Wednesday ended years of “will she, won’t she” suspense to finally take up the challenging task of reviving Congress fortunes in the barren turf of eastern Uttar Pradesh.
The announcement of her appointment as party general secretary (in-charge of east UP) by her brother, Rahul Gandhi, caught senior Congress leaders unawares and set off heated speculation of the trigger behind her long-awaited formal
plunge into politics and the possible impact in UP, which had looked like a straight fight between BJP and the SP-BSP combine.
The role of poll management of a politically volatile region where caste and religion often shape voting preferences and which also includes PM Narendra Modi’s constituency of Varanasi and CM Yogi Adityanath’s home turf, Gorakhpur, seemed aimed to project a serious Congress bid to emerge as the third pole in the state.
Rahul’s reaction indicated as much when the Congress president said the party would play on the “front foot” in UP even as he sought to convey that the decision was not a hostile move against SP and BSP. He made it clear that giving Priyanka charge of eastern UP and Jyotiraditya Scindia that of western UP were not temporary moves. “Now, Congress will have its own CM in UP,” Rahul said.
The appointments are a novel experiment by Congress to split UP into two regions, with separate monitors. There is now a likelihood of two state chiefs. The development immediately spurred ongoing speculation whether Priyanka would replace mother Sonia at Rae Bareli or contest separately from Sultanpur. Rahul left the issue open, saying it would be his sister’s call.
An early read of the fallout of a credible Congress challenge — if it develops — seemed to be that a genuine three-cornered contest should aid BJP that was faced with regional biggies SP and BSP joining hands. Congress, like SP and BSP, will compete for Muslim votes. At the same time, a Priyanka-aided revival of Congress would appeal to Brahmins, which could hurt saffron prospects. It is also possible that upper castes unhappy with saffron politics, but chary of SP-BSP, now have a third option, one that will weaken BJP’s main challengers.
Priyanka, who was seen by Congress workers as a “natural” for politics, was never said to be averse to being in its hurly burly, but had confined her role to that of a campaigner for Sonia and Rahul in the family seats of Rae Bareli and Amethi; possibly also because Sonia did not prefer to blur Rahul’s choice as heir apparent. With Congress’s recent win in the three BJP-ruled states having settled the leadership issue, a space for creating a bigger role for Priyanka has emerged. It could also be felt that the bounce provided by the results was a good time to launch Priyanka and gain traction in UP where Congress is in danger of being locked out.
Interestingly, the appointment comes in a year that marks the centenary of Priyanka’s great-great-grandfather Motilal Nehru taking over as Congress president at Amritsar in 1919.
UP assignment Priyanka’s baptism by fire
That this will be baptism by fire for Priyanka, currently in the US and expected to take charge of her assignment in first week of February, is evident from the fact that Congress has declined in its one-time stronghold with 80 Lok Sabha seats post-Mandal and Mandir politics, touching a nadir in 2014. While it could win only two seats in the last LS polls, it won just seven in the 403-member assembly in 2017.
Pitching Priyanka into the UP “dangal”, where regional power houses BSP and SP have left Congress out of an anti-BJP alliance, seems a serious gamble. It shows a willingness to go full throttle, its fallout for the “secular” camp unity notwithstanding. The stakes of moving Priyanka to centrestage are too high for the move to be a feint, it was felt. If the challenge gathers steam, Congress may be able to work out an informal deal with SP-BSP for “friendly” fights in some seats.
For her political debut, the choice of eastern UP is interesting. The sprawling pocket has strong presence of Brahmins and Muslims — demographics that Congress hopes would drift to its fold in a favourable campaign. It appears the party’s best hope in the otherwise bleak landscape.
His decision also marked Rahul’s apparent squeamishness over being seen as a “dynast”: a tag which was so much at odds with his professed aim to democratise Congress, and signalled a resolve to brazen out the probe facing Priyanka’s controversial spouse Robert. The appointment comes when the probes seemed to be closing in on Vadra’s alleged role in scams. She has previously said she will not be “cowed down” by the BJP government and will bank on a charismatic presence that attracts media attention.
At the same time, party insiders conceded, there is a possibility of a dual centre of power emerging over time even though Rahul and Priyanka are seen to enjoy an extraordinary synergy, with the sister seen as a confidante and supporter of her older brother. At the same time, she will be more than just a general secretary and formalise the influence she has wielded from behind the scene. Her debut can also be read as an assertion of her claim to her political legacy.
A political role for Priyanka has often been discussed. As Sonia Gandhi began to mull succession in UPA-2, there was pressure that the legatee be her daughter who bore resemblance to Congress mascot Indira Gandhi and was seen to have her political spark.
After Sonia made it clear that Rahul will hold the baton, the 2014 rout and continuing slide over four years created uncertainty, with repeated demands from sections that Priyanka be brought in. Former AICC general secretary incharge of organisation, Janardan Dwivedi, had already touched off a furore by claiming that father Rajiv Gandhi had confided in him that Priyanka was a “natural”.
Though Sonia managed to stub the renewed clamour, Priyanka’s entry amid Congress decline would inevitably have drawn comparisons with Rahul, and resulted in confusion in the ranks.
Also, with Congress sensing revival, insiders felt introducing an “X-factor” would add to the momentum nationally and could make a crucial difference. There is a strong possibility that Congress may press her into campaigning in states where it has a direct face off with BJP.
But one thing is clear: Success or failure, there is no going back for her after formally joining politics following nearly a decade of equivocation.
Quotes: 2008-19
From: January 24, 2019: The Times of India
From: January 24, 2019: The Times of India
See graphics:
Priyanka Gandhi, quotes- 2008-19: Part I
Priyanka Gandhi, quotes- 2008-19- Part II
Politics: 1989-2019, Jan
Swati Mathur, THE OTHER ‘BHAIYYA’ TO THE RESCUE, January 24, 2019: The Times of India
From: Swati Mathur, THE OTHER ‘BHAIYYA’ TO THE RESCUE, January 24, 2019: The Times of India
From: Swati Mathur, THE OTHER ‘BHAIYYA’ TO THE RESCUE, January 24, 2019: The Times of India
More Than Two Decades After Her First Poll Campaign, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra Decides It’s Time To Join Politics
In an informal interaction with the press while campaigning for brother Rahul Gandhi in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls in Amethi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra was asked the one question that had consumed political analysts and workers: “when will you formally join politics?”
In reply, Priyanka had said, “My own childhood has been anything but normal. I have seen the violent deaths of my grandmother and my father. I want to make sure my children have as normal a childhood as possible. Once they are grown up, maybe then....”, giving an insight into why she emerged every five years in Amethi and Rae Bareli, the Gandhi bastions in UP, but would not venture beyond.
Until now.
Her children, Miraya and Raihan, are now both well into their teens. And though she still makes time to travel to Puducherry to watch her daughter play basketball, and for photography (she has co-authored the book Ranthambore: The Tiger’s Realm), Priyanka — “bhaiyya” for most Congress workers in the Gandhi boroughs — has finally decided it is time to join politics, formally.
The state where she marks her fullfledged political debut is, however, no stranger to Priyanka the politician — the sharp-witted woman with an easy smile, and a striking resemblance with her grandmother. In the Gandhi bastions, she made her mark as much for being easily accessible — often sitting with an arm around elderly women from self-help groups in Amethi and Rae Bareli while listening to their problems — as for a temper that terrified party workers when they failed to execute an order. And in the 2014 election, when BJP was on a high and Smriti Irani led the charge in the Gandhi boroughs, Priyanka kept spirits up by matching her barb-for-barb.
She also showed she wouldn’t shy away from doing things her way when she met her father’s assassin in Vellore jail in 2008.
The ability to work with single-minded focus, party workers say, is what sets Priyanka apart. She began campaigning from Amethi first in 1989, and then again in 1991 when she and mother Sonia pitched for Rajiv Gandhi as Prime Minister. In 1999, after a gap of eight years, Priyanka took charge once again.
A senior Congress functionary who worked with the Gandhi family recalled that in 1999, when Sonia contested both Bellary and Amethi, Priyanka worked tirelessly on the campaign, setting herself and party workers targets. “It was a difficult election because there were BJP governments in UP as well as at the Centre. We were also recovering from the 1998 battle, in which Congress had lost Amethi. Priyanka was determined. She had set herself and us a target; that Sonia Gandhi should defeat her opponent by a margin of a minimum 3 lakh votes,” the Congress member said.
Sonia Gandhi won that election, defeating her rival BJP candidate Sanjay Sinh — now in Congress — by a margin of 3,00,012 votes.
In many ways, Congress is depending on Priyanka to replicate in East UP the organisational setup she built for her mother and brother in Rae Bareli and Amethi. At present, These are probably the only two districts in Uttar Pradesh where Congress has a team of workers in every gram sabha and where the party holds ‘jan sabhas’ (mass contact) programmes daily, contacting nearly 100 people at their doorsteps. As she takes on a larger responsibility in UP, she’s Congress’ resurrection plan, or, as Congress president Rahul Gandhi said, the party “playing on the front foot”.
1989-2019
Subodh Ghildiyal, Rahul In Place, Cong Plays Trump Card, January 24, 2019: The Times of India
From: Subodh Ghildiyal, Rahul In Place, Cong Plays Trump Card, January 24, 2019: The Times of India
Can she repeat ’99 magic of Rae Bareli in 2019?
At 4am on Wednesday, Congress manager for UP Ghulam Nabi Azad was booked on a commercial flight to Lucknow where he was to hold a meeting of party leaders from eastern and central regions. And at 6am, Thursday, he was to rush back to the capital to brainstorm with leaders from the western region.
Azad’s schedule was packed, but there was one thing he had probably no idea of — that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and Jyotiraditya Scindia were set to replace him as managers for UP.
So closely guarded did Congress president Rahul Gandhi keep the high-voltage move, that none seemed to have a clue. The secrecy, that matched every inch the will-she-won’tshe suspense over Priyanka’s plunge, underlined the significance of the decision.
For long, Congress ranks have touted Priyanka as the trump card who could flip political equations in a jiffy. Insiders and experts cite how she turned around the election in the family borough of Rae Bareli-Amethi in 1999 after it went saffron in 1998 aided by father Rajiv Gandhi’s estranged cousin Arun Nehru and defector Sanjay Sinh.
“Kya aap us aadmi ko vote doge jisne mere pita ki peeth me chhura bhonka tha,” she asked rhetorically, an emotional appeal widely credited with re-establishing the party connect with voters swayed by A B Vajpayee’s charisma.
Two decades later, her formal entry in politics comes under no less a crisis than the one Congress faced during the Vajpayee wave. While Congress managed to pull off a 3-0 whitewash over BJP in assembly polls last month, it remains a poor player in UP and has been shunned by fellow “secular” travellers SP and BSP from the anti-saffron alliance.
While accepting that Rahul’s aggressive leadership is finally working, Congress cadre feel Priyanka has a popular appeal. She has a likeability that endears workers. Others see in her the image of Indira Gandhi. That, strategists have long argued, would help connect Congress with traditional voters across states.
During the Congress decade in power 2004-14, she kept her campaigning limited to the family borough in UP. But she was the sounding board on the “kitchen table” where Sonia and Rahul mulled important decisions. However, as the crisis gripped Congress post-2014, she moved to help brother Rahul steer the ship. The key stage came in 2017 UP assembly polls when she helped negotiate with SP, draft in pollster Prashant Kishor and even campaigned. But the dismal party performance put a brake on her activities, insiders said.
According to leaders, Priyanka’s dilemma was gargantuan. Whenever voices rose from within that she join politics, they implied a no-confidence in her “dear brother”. She could have stepped in, but it would have led to comparisons with Rahul and made her the rallying point for the “disgruntled”. She did not want it.
In that sense, she has timed her entry. With assembly election triumphs having removed any questions over Rahul’s leadership ability, she appeared free from her political doubts and ready to take the plunge.
The person
She has been in the public space yet far away from the trolling eyes of the Twitterati. Not many know that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s social media persona has been a work in progress since 2016.
She joined Instagram as late as the summer of 2016 and has just over 57,000 followers. Unlike the only two accounts she follows — her brother Rahul and the Indian National Congress Party, hers is not verified. The just-nominated Congress general secretary (Uttar Pradesh East) joined Facebook sometime in 2015 but became active a year later. On Facebook, she has a larger presence with over 3.7 lakh followers. Both Instagram and Facebook seem to share similar content. She is not on Twitter yet.
On Insta, Priyanka comes across as someone acutely aware of the legacy of the Nehru-Gandhi surname, sometimes just a modest doting daughter, sister and mother. She often posts historic photos of Mahatma Gandhi, her greatgrandfather Nehru and her grandmother Indira Gandhi.
But the Priyanka that predominates the Instagram and Facebook accounts is an affable woman seen waving, shaking hands, smiling and talking and bonding with people in Indian villages and the capital city alike. In one snapshot, she is seen greeting an elderly Muslim during Eid. In another she is chatting away with rural women.
The Instagram photos also reveal her chic side. She wears both traditional and western outfits. Silk sarees, figure-hugging tops, trousers with a neat inverted bob haircut and pearls dangling from her ears, cotton saris, salwar kameez — Priyanka showcases a gamut of wardrobe with both panache and nonchalance.
Interestingly, the social media accounts are as much about revealing as concealing. The pictures, videos and posts do not tell us who her friends and advisors are.
But what they do show is that her life revolves around her family. In one recent photo, she is seen pulling the cheek of her mother, Sonia Gandhi, widely recognized as one of the most influential women in the world. In another, she is seen guarding Rahul against political workers. There are also photos of her husband Robert Vadra and her son Raihan and daughter Miraya.
A considerable part of her emotional space is occupied by the memories of her late father, Rajiv Gandhi, grandmother Indira Gandhi. A lot of pictures are from her childhood.
Personality traits
2004-17/ ‘She listens even to how others listen’
January 28, 2019: The Times of India
‘Priyanka is a leader who listens even to how others listen’
A quarter century ago, Ruchir Sharma hit the road to see Indian democracy at work with a caravan of fellow writers. His new book ‘Democracy on the Road: A 25-Year Journey through India’ draws from those trips. The following excerpts focus on the author’s meetings with Priyanka Gandhi and travels in eastern UP, where she recently agreed to lead the Congress campaign
GENERAL ELECTIONS, UP, APRIL-MAY 2004
The first time we saw Priyanka Gandhi campaigning, not far from the family home base in Amethi, she was leaning so far out of her open vehicle she seemed about to spill into the crowd, smiling and waving like an exuberant teenager passing through a sea of friends. The crowd responded in kind, fans hanging from light poles and tree branches to catch a glimpse, jostling to get closer.
The yearning for contact with major leaders is a common spectacle in India, where voters will risk bodily harm to themselves to make contact, not just to touch a hand but often to grasp, hold, shake, physically connect with their political heroes. It is not unusual to see politicians come out worse for wear, and I could see at Priyanka’s rally that her hands were bruised from the adoration of fans. The sense that Priyanka could be the one was overwhelming, but she told us she wanted to stay close to home and focus on raising her two young kids.
What surprised us about Amethi was that it did not look like a ‘VIP constituency’. While leading politicians often steer funds to their home districts to transform them into oases of relative wealth, Amethi was a typical UP backwater. At a Gandhi family guesthouse, we asked Priyanka why.
Her answer shocked me: it had been hard to raise funds since her father Rajiv was prime minister in the late 1980s. Opposition parties had conspired to starve Amethi of funding. If the Gandhis could not spark hometown development, it was a sign of how difficult it for politicians to deliver in India, where party rivalries and a broken bureaucracy stymy action, but also of how the Gandhis operate. On our subsequent election trips we saw that leaders like Sharad Pawar and Kamal Nath had created real VIP constituencies in Baramati and Chhindwara with first-rate roads, concrete homes, hospitals and universities.
I later asked a leading Indian industrialist how it was that leaders like Nath and Pawar could develop VIP constituencies, yet the mighty Gandhis could not do the same for Amethi. He said it was about playing the game: figures like Nath and Pawar are on friendly terms with private business people and will not hesitate to tap them for development funds and assistance. The Gandhis are too wary of private business to make the necessary connections or call in direct favors.
‘Rahul is smarter than I am’
ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS, UP FEBRUARY 2012
Priyanka was still limiting her campaign to the family strongholds in Amethi and Rae Bareli, yet drew huge crowds. She seemed to enjoy politics in a way her brother Rahul did not. Priyanka would later reach out to people she knew in our group to find out what we had thought of her performance following the roadshows. We passed on what voters in Amethi were saying: that with her strong features, handloomed saris and pinned-back hair, Priyanka reminded them of Indira.
Polls still ranked Indira the most popular Indian prime minister ever, beloved as a strong woman who fought for the poor and died serving her country. This stoic image still animates Congress confidantes, who tell a story about how Indira would kiss Rahul and Priyanka before school every day, adding on the morning of her assassination these discordant words, “No matter what happens to me, you will not cry.”
The 2012 Congress campaign was playing on these sympathies in a slogan: ‘Priyanka nahin aandhi hain, doosri Indira Gandhi hain.’ Priyanka met us at a guest house the Gandhi family frequents in Rae Bareli, entering the large living room in a way that commanded attention without trying, launching into conversation focused on us. Then she spotted Rahul approaching the house and went to greet him. We could see them through the window, one of our traveling group members later recalled, “obviously close, steeped in the politics of their ancestors, alone in their close-knit world”.
People were calling on Priyanka to run for prime minister but she deferred to Rahul, saying he “is much smarter and more knowledgeable than I am.” She cast herself as a manager, Rahul as the thinker, and expressed a timeless willingness to accept India as it is. Asked why for decades Congress rallies featured “the same boring speeches, same warm-up acts”, Priyanka responded, “It is what people expect. This is what we have to do.”
In his rallies, Rahul was still prone to giving lectures on grassroots democracy and Gandhi family history, but Priyanka came across as a leader who listens even to how others listen: ‘A lot of communication amongst the masses is done at a subterranean level which we urban people don’t understand,” she said. “They spread the word about whom to vote for and what the issues are in a barely visible way.”
For all her star power, Congress was losing its way in Uttar Pradesh. Rahul was having hardly any impact, Sonia’s crowds were less enthusiastic than normal. Priyanka’s husband Robert Vadra — who had often posed in front of fast cars or in tank tops, images widely seen as beneath the Gandhis — had made headlines saying he would be happy to enter politics. Priyanka issued a clarification next day, saying that as a successful businessman her husband had no time to run for office.
Can star power overcome tough realities?
ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS, UP | FEBRUARY 2017
As always Modi was reserving his harshest sarcasm for the Gandhis, ridiculing Madam Sonia and Prince Rahul, the way they invoked Indira and other members of the dynasty.
Modi’s obsession with Gandhis seemed off target in UP, where Congress ran fourth behind the BJP and the regional parties of Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati. We saw a largely Dalit crowd of 50,000 wearing the blue caps of her party wait three hours for Mayawati’s helicopter to land near the hardscrabble town of Jaunpur, and still erupt in raucous cheers: ‘Behenji tum sangharsh karo, hum tumhare saath hain.’ Congress was running as a junior partner to Akhilesh, who was dogged by complaints about the stagnation of UP. At this point a ‘smog belt’ was choking the subcontinent from the Ganga to the Indus and had become a huge issue in Delhi, and therefore in the English media. While upper-middle-class consumers had once clamoured for generators to guarantee their power supply, they now talked of buying air purifiers for every room in their homes. The pollution was just as thick in UP — in Lucknow you could taste it, like smoke — yet it was never mentioned during our road trip.
Eastern UP voters had worse worries, including basic sanitation. They accused Akhilesh of failing to erect the toilets required by Modi’s Open Defecation Free campaign. In Gorakhpur, voters told us they had sold the free laptops distributed by Akhilesh because the city lacked the electricity to run them.
Chains like Lemon Tree had begun to open mid-market hotels in second-tier cities, but Gorakhpur was beyond their reach. We stayed at the Clarks Inn Grand, which touted itself as ‘the only star hotel in Gorakhpur’, but was crawling with spiders, cockroaches and lizards. When a companion complained about bedbugs, the manager sent a bellboy to pick them off the sheets one by one.
Frustration with the pace of development was a plus for the BJP and its longtime MP in Gorakhpur, Yogi Adityanath. He met us at the Gorakhnath Mutt, in a saffron-coloured room, with saffroncoloured curtains and matching sofas. Outside stood a statue of the Goddess Kali, who is usually depicted wearing only a garland of skulls. But here she appeared fully clothed. Asked why, one of the priests responded with a question: “Admi ka nazar ka kya bharosa?”
In Varanasi, we found the full might of Modi’s government mobilizing to create a VVIP constituency. Everywhere we looked a national ministry seemed to be building — a cow conservation centre here, a cargo terminal there. Yet Varanasi was still India and delivery remained a challenge, with many projects stuck in the arguing stage, as BJP officials in Delhi struggled to coordinate with Akhilesh’s state government in UP.
Two hours west in the city of Mirzapur, we found views of Indian economic reality dividing along political lines, with Muslim opponents of Modi saying he was killing jobs and business, upper caste backers saying he was doing just fine. Following Bollywood’s lead, Amazon would later release “Mirzapur”— a series built around its criminal underground — but as we have often found on our travels, the celluloid image did not square with the prosaic reality. Voters were less concerned about dons and hitmen than decaying public services, symbolized by the state of the central clock tower. As in many Indian cities, the clock was not working.
Priyanka now faces tough realities: Modi, Adityanath, Akhilesh, and Mayawati all command loyal community support that Congress lacks in UP. It will be difficult to make inroads in those vote blocs, particularly since promises of progress ring particularly hollow to voters in a region where even the Gandhis have been unable to bring development to their own home constituency. Priyanka may need to be more than the second coming of Indira to deliver.
