A scion of the Gandhis faces scrutiny

AMETHI, India -- Most people in this farming region haul their water home in buckets. It's often so dirty it makes them sick. Their roads are rutted like washboards. And half the time, they have no electricity.

For more than 25 years, this deprived district has been the Gandhi family's political finishing school, where heirs of India's most privileged dynasty are groomed.

Amethi's voters recently sent Rahul Gandhi, 34, to Parliament for the first time. A late uncle, Sanjay, once held the seat. So did his father, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. In 1999, eight years after his father was assassinated, his mother, Sonia, also won the right to represent Amethi.

Last month Sonia Gandhi was poised to become prime minister after the Congress Party she leads won national elections. By refusing the post, and choosing to wield power behind the scenes, Sonia is holding open the door to the prime minister's office for Rahul, says biographer Rasheed Kidwai, who knows her well.

Sonia was born and raised in Italy, but Kidwai calls her "a very Indian mother" because she wants her son to take up the family mantle instead of his younger sister, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who is considered politically sharper.

"Nobody, to my knowledge, had ever asked [Sonia] about Rahul's political future. She was always asked about Priyanka's political future," says Kidwai, a journalist and author of "Sonia: A Biography."

"But mother Sonia -- an Indian mother -- would always make it a point to bring son Rahul in," he says. "Rahul has gone more to his mother's side: He is shy and doesn't like to seek the limelight."

Rajiv's mother, former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, forced him to lead the party -- against Sonia's wishes--after the matriarch's first choice, younger son Sanjay, died in a 1980 plane crash. Sanjay's widow, Maneka Gandhi, is now a member of Parliament for the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, which draws much of its support from Hindu nationalists.

Maneka thinks her sister-in-law outsmarted her opponents by refusing to be prime minister, ending the argument over her foreign roots but allowing her to keep control over the government.

She isn't shy about her influence, Maneka says.

"I think she's the power in front of the throne," she says. "I don't think she makes any bones about the fact that she has avoided the flak that would have gone with the position, but she has no intention whatsoever of relinquishing any of the power of the position."

As president of the Congress Party, Sonia appoints its top officials and is expected to name Rahul party secretary general responsible for the battleground state of Uttar Pradesh -- where Amethi is located and Indira Gandhi ran for Parliament beginning in 1967 -- setting him up for succession.

But as Rahul's star rises, his resume is coming under scrutiny. "They are trying to build him up to become prime minister, but this won't happen," says Hriday Narayan Dixit, vice president of the BJP in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state. "His only ability is being the son of Sonia Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi."

Before Rahul entered politics this year, Indians knew little of him beyond what the media reported: He went to Harvard and Cambridge; he worked abroad in jobs described as financial consulting, software engineering and brokering bank securities; and he is a bachelor with a reclusive Colombian girlfriend.

Few who know Rahul well will speak about him, or his business, on the record. Rahul and his spokesman, Rajiv Shukla, a Congress Party member of Parliament, declined interview requests.

More than a year before Rahul became a candidate in April, the Times of India wrote that he had returned to India to set up a software exporting business.

But Rahul didn't have to swear to anything on his resume until April 3, when he signed an affidavit required of all candidates for Parliament.

In the declaration, he listed two educational qualifications: a 1989 high school diploma and a 1995 degree from Cambridge University. It does not mention an undergraduate degree.