Out of shadows, Rahul & his cyguys

Rahul Gandhi is the not the lone youth to come to the aid of the Grand Old Party. He is leading a pack of pedigreed pups, also known as the ...

Rahul Gandhi is the not the lone youth to come to the aid of the Grand Old Party. He is leading a pack of pedigreed pups, also known as the “cyguys”— short for cyber-age guys—who are all ready to leave their air-conditioned environs and hit the road in search of a Lok Sabha membership.

Unlike Rajiv Gandhi’s “computer boys” of the 1980s who were bound together by the old school tie, Rahul’s cyguys are not quite cronies. But they do have three things in common—political lineage, degrees from elite western universities, and an ease with “cyber-age technology.” Many of them have also been “mentored” by the Jairam Ramesh-Salman Khurshid duo who are manning the Congress party’s “war room” overseeing Campaign 2004.

The cyguys include Milind Deora, Sachin Pilot, C.R. Keshavan, Rajeev Gowda, R.P. Singh, and Sandeep Dikshit. Milind, a Boston University alumnus and son of Murli Deora, has already been nominated for the prestigious Mumbai South constituency. Sachin Pilot who has a degree from Wharton Business School, has also got a ticket for the Dausa seat in Rajasthan, earlier held by his late father Rajesh Pilot.

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R.P. Singh is an MBA from Berkeley and is a fixture at Khurshid’s 99 South Avenue office. He may be of a lesser pedigree (his grandfather was a minister of state for foreign affairs under Indira Gandhi) but is in the running for the Bulandshahar seat against the BJP’s formidable Kalyan Singh.

C.R. Keshvan and Rajeev Gowda have so far kept a low profile, but are considered among the whizkids. Gowda boasts a PhD from Wharton and teaches at IIM, Bangalore. Son of former Karnataka assembly Speaker M.V. Venkatappah, his “mentors” are trying to get him the Bangalore South seat.

Similarly, Keshavan—great-grandson of C. Rajagopalachari—who runs a software company in Chennai is being considered for the Salem constituency.

And then there is Delhi chief minister’s son Sandeep Dikshit who studied at IRMA and has been running an NGO for some years now. He wants East Delhi but is willing to settle for a seat in UP as well.

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These apart, there are other “youth” leaders who have already made a bit of a name in the party. Leading the lot is Jyotiraditya Scindia who will re-contest Guna in Madhya Pradesh, Congress MLA R.P.N. Singh who wants to contest the Padrauna seat earlier held by his father C.P.N. Singh, Youth Congress leader Randeep Surjewala who is eyeing Hissar, and Jitin Prasad who is likely to get late Jitendra Prasad’s Shahjahanpur constituency.

While Rahul Gandhi is the uncrowned king of the new “youth brigade” and has developed close working ties with some of them in the last few months of “poll strategising”, the 21st century cyguys are unlikely to have the same kind of control over the party apparatus as Rajiv’s boys once did.

For one thing, Rajiv’s friends came into the limelight when the Congress had reached a zenith with 400-plus seats. Rahul’s generation, on the other hand, is entering the political fray when the party is at its lowest ebb. Many of them are unlikely to win even if they manage to get tickets.

The real test, an AICC functionary said, was whether the “modern-minded and technology-focussed” new brigade would stick to the mundane task of the party-building even if the Congress gets nowhere near South Block this May. That will be test for Rahul Gandhi as well, the untested new hope of the Congress party.