Rahul Gandhi: Up, Close and Personal

In spite of belonging to the most politically powerful family of India, politics was not the first career option for Rahul Gandhi. If you look back into history, you will that Rahul is a degree holder in International Relationship and philosophy from presumed colleges like Cambridge and Rollins. He was born in Delhi and spent a greater part of his adolescence in the city. His switched a lot of schools. Starting his primary education in Delhi, he shortly moved to Doon School in Dehradun where he studied for 3 years only due to the assassination of his grandmother, Indira Gandhi.  After that, he was homeschooled with his younger sister Priyanka due to security reasons. He later went for higher education to the United States and United Kingdom and completed his M Phil under a fake name, Raul Vinci in order to protect his identity. Only the security agencies monitoring Rahul Gandhi and some University officials know his real identity. He led his career in the field of International relations.

Belonging to a political family, it was believed by everyone that Rahul Gandhi will follow the generations-old tradition and serve the country under the Congress party. However, Rahul put a break to these assumptions when he joined a management consulting firm in London. He worked there for a period of three years and then moved back to India where he started his own outsourcing firm Backops in Mumbai in the year 2002.  Although he faced certain criticism for this, this move by Rahul Gandhi was later considered smart as he got an opportunity to furnish his skills by analyzing the trends of Nation before entering the politics.

In 2004, Rahul chose to get into politics by taking part in the election from Amethi, his father's former constituency. Surprising a lot of political leaders, he won by a huge difference when the Congress party was doing poorly in Utter Pradesh. This victory was a great morale booster for the Congress party. In a short period of time, Rahul Gandhi's incredible leadership skills surface him as a well-known youth icon in the Indian politics. He was designated as the leader of Indian Youth Congress (IYC) and the National Students Union of India (NSUI) which are the youth wing of the Congres and the inspired a lot of youngsters to involve in Indian political system which in turn resulted in increase of young members from mere 2 lakhs to 25 lakhs in a very short period of time.

Rahu launched a campaign under the name of “Aam Admi Ka Sipahi” commonly known as AAKS. The programme was designated to spread awareness among the underprivileged and poor. His campaign was a huge success and youth from all parts of the nation actively participated in the campaign to spread awareness about various Government schemes to the local poor population.

In the year 2013, the senior leaders of Congress party demanded that Rahul Gandhi should come forward and take a more responsible position in the country’s politics. As a result of this, he was elected as the Vice President of the Indian National Congress. Since then, he is consistently addressing the rallies personally to find the problems faced by the people across the country.

Despite the loss in 2104 election, Rahul Gandhi has become the new face of Indian politics and is gaining a lot of attention for his new ideas in the political scenario, earning him appreciation as well as criticism at the same time.