KEY POINTS:
Towards the end of his campaign speech, Rahul Gandhi delivered his trump card.
"Don't forget," he shouted to the crowd, "I am Indira Gandhi's grandson."
It was a politically shrewd finale. As the 36-year-old heir to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty canvasses for India's ruling Congress party in the nation's most populous state, he is sharply aware of the potent appeal of his roots.
During a tour of the state of Uttar Pradesh last week, the photogenic politician unashamedly exploited his heritage in a bid to revive support for the Congress party, which has been controlled by his family for most of the past 90 years.
Wherever he went, he was greeted with a mix of curiosity, a fawning servility once bestowed on maharajahs and a hysteria usually reserved for Bollywood stars.
Voting began last Saturday in a state-wide poll that will continue for the next month as 114 million voters cast their ballots. Uttar Pradesh is seen as a key political barometer, indicating the likely fate of Congress in the 2009 general elections and the health of the opposition Bharatiya Janata party.
The result may also determine Gandhi's own political future. Although he is not up for election he has masterminded the recent campaign, hoping to increase Congress' share of the state's seats from the meagre 25 out of 403 it won in 2004.
No one expects Congress to win outright, but if Gandhi's efforts boost his party's standing even marginally he is expected to take a more prominent role in Indian politics, accepting what many see as his destiny as a Prime Minister-in-waiting.
As he made his way around Uttar Pradesh, Congress leaders introduced him as India's future leader.
Newspapers called him the party's Crown Prince and posters showed a young, smiling Gandhi alongside images of his powerful relatives: his great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru was founding father of free India and the country's first Prime Minister.
His grandmother Indira Gandhi, was Prime Minister twice between 1966 and her assassination in 1984.
His father Rajiv Gandhi, took over as Prime Minister after Indira's murder and was blown up by a suicide bomber in 1991.
His mother Sonia Gandhi, Rajiv's Italian-born wife and current leader of the Congress party, chose not to accept the post of Prime Minister after leading the party to victory in 2004.
During this campaign Gandhi has refused to be shackled by security precautions, dismaying his bodyguards by his readiness to leap out from his car at unscheduled stops, to sign autographs and be garlanded with flowers.
Such accessibility has won the affection of onlookers, drawn to the Gandhi roadshow by warm feelings towards the dynasty. But analysts believe that his parade of loyalty to the state where he serves as an MP will not be sufficient to rescue the party in a region where only one in three houses has electricity and income is about half the Indian average.
There is considerable uncertainty over whether he has the talent and political appetite to fulfil the expectations of his supporters.
One of the most famous photographs of Rahul shows him, aged 20, walking around his father's funeral pyre, stony-faced, eyes downcast.
In the wake of his tragedy-scarred upbringing, he left India to study at Harvard and Cambridge, and worked abroad as a consultant.
He returned home a decade later and became involved in politics slowly and with an absence of passion. Since his election in 2004, he has made only two speeches in parliament.
For a while his dynamic younger sister, Priyanka, seemed more likely to inherit the family crown, but Sonia has firmly pushed her son forward to greater prominence.
He is impeccably polite, exuding a quiet, self-assured charm. He speaks worthily, but without zeal, of his commitment to development and of the need to get India's youth to become active in a political scene dominated by men in their 70s and 80s.
Like his Italian mother he wears Indian dress while campaigning and shows a good command of Hindi. But in the evening, he relaxes European-style and can occasionally be seen dining at the astronomically priced Travertino, one of New Delhi's few Italian restaurants.
Little is known about his private life. Rumours of a Latin-American girlfriend, viewed as politically unacceptable by his mother, have never been substantiated and Rahul regularly tops lists of India's most eligible bachelors. In public, he seems painfully diffident and is so wary of the media he barely speaks to journalists.
His defenders point out that both his parents were reluctant politicians who sacrificed their personal lives to the party's demands, unwillingly, out of a sense of duty. Others remain sceptical, describing his campaign as belated and lacklustre and his speeches as "dull, sterile and bland".
The ease with which power has been handed from one generation to the next in this dynasty has a curiously feudal feel when the government has adopted "India - the world's largest democracy" as one of its slogans. In defence, supporters point to political dynasties in the United States like the Kennedys and Bushes.
The Uttar Pradesh election results are due in early May. Analysts will then judge if the fifth generation of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty has what it takes to secure the family's political future.
- Observer
