From flight-deck to P.M. in 4 years

Press, 2 November 1984, Page 6

From flight-deck to P.M. in 4 years

NZPA-Reuter New Delhi

Rajiv Gandhi has little experience of Government. Although he is a grandson of independent India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and great-grandson of another leading nationalist figure, Mr Gandhi did not enter politics until after the death of his younger brother, Sanjay, in 1980.

But his mother lost no time in grooming him for the succession, which had seemed destined for the dynamic Sanjay. Since his tentative beginnings, Mr Gandhi has played an ever-greater political role and became a general secretary of the governing Congress (I) Party early last year.

He. is married to an Italian, and was an airline pilot until brought into politics, hailed as a "Mr Clean” who could bring new integrity to the Indian political scene.

Mr Gandhi was born in 1945 and educated at an exclusive private school in northern India and at Cambridge. His father was Feroze Gandhi, a Parsee, unlike the Nehrus who were Kashmiri Brahmins, a patrician Hindu caste. He flew for the domestic carrier, Indian Airlines, until Sanjay’s death in 1980 in

a plane crash shattered Mrs Gandhi’s aspirations for her younger son and dose adviser to become a political leader.

“I was very happy with the airlines. But after Sanjay’s death there was a void in the party, and a feeling that only I could fill it,” he said in a newspaper interview later.

In 1981, Mr Gandhi was elected to Sanjay’s former Parliamentary constituency of Amethi in north India. Sanjay’s widow, Maneka, estranged from the late Prime Minister, formed her own political party and vowed to fight Rajiv in his

constituency in the General Election due in January. In February last year, after big defeats suffered in state elections by the Congress (I), Mr Gandhi was appointed as one of five general secretaries in a shake-up of the party conducted by his mother. Hailed by party workers as India’s hope for the future, he took centre-stage beside Mrs Gandhi at a national convention of Congress (I) in January. There was no doubt that he held the de facto number two position after his mother — confirmed by his swift assumption of power yesterday.

Later this year he visited the troubled state of Punjab despite threats by Sikh extremists to kill him. He told Congress (I) workers not to be intimidated by extremists’ threats, but to go into remote villages to restore confidence in the party. Mr Gandhi has been playing a key role in preparations for elections, becoming the main organiser of party workers in the country’s 22 states. ’ Despite his lack of direct experience in international affairs, he accompanied his mother on several trips abroad, including those to Washington and Moscow.