Mani seeks Rahul’s ‘blessings’ for Panchayati Raj schemes

A day after he asked the Indian Youth Congress and the National Students’ Union of India to usher an era of direct elections in the organisation, Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi used a book release function on Tuesday to reaffirm his faith in “every fellow citizen”. The book release, however, also showed why the democratisation project in the organisation would require some steely resolve to overhaul a political culture steeped in entrenched hierarchies.

“The common thread running through Panchayati Raj programmes or IT expansion is that we believe in every member of the country,” said Rahul at the release of the Hindi translation of Mani Shankar Aiyar’s book, Remembering Rajiv, first published some 15 years ago.

Recalling a conversation with his father during an election campaign in 1989, he said: “I (once) asked him ‘Papa, why don’t you leave politics? You always wanted to become a pilot’… He replied: ‘No, I never thought of leaving it because I believe in the people of India’.”

The entrenched hierarchy in the organisation was, however, evident when Mani sought “his blessings” for various Panchayati Raj programmes after he complained of “hurdles” in the task, considered the brainchild of late Rajiv Gandhi. “I have been facing difficulties in my ministry for the last four years to implement the schemes,” said Aiyar. “Till we get blessings from the top, the scheme would not succeed,” the minister added.