beyondbrics

Rahul Gandhi, great-grandson of India’s first premier Jawaharlal Nehru and son of Rajiv Gandhi, the assassinated former prime minister, and Sonia Gandhi, at present the de facto leader of India, seems destined to head the world’s biggest democracy.

And now it looks like he can add Bill Gates to the list of people who’ve helped him on his way.

For now, 39-year-old scion of the Gandhi-Nehru dynasty is focused on developing one of India’s poorest states Uttar Pradesh (UP) and in particular his constituency Amethi, a family seat that was held before him by his great-grandfather, his uncle Sanjay Gandhi and his father.

Rahul’s latest coup in his mission was to get Bill Gates, the world’s second richest man, to promise that he would turn Amethi into an information technology hub.

Here is what the Hindu reported:

“Addressing a meeting of women self help groups (SHGs) under the Rajiv Gandhi Mahila Vikas Pariyojana, Mr Gates stressed the importance of computer education in this age of internet and said that he would do his best to develop Amethi as an IT hub.”

Gates is not the first to have visited UP with Rahul. Before him came David Miliband, the now former British foreign minister and likeliest candidate to succeed Gordon Brown as leader of the Labour Party, and several other foreign executives. Miliband also spent a night in a small village with a Hindu lower-caste Dalit family (check out the pictures).

Rahul, who has been an MP for Amethi since 2004, and his mother Sonia, who is the MP of the adjacent constituency of Rae Barelli, have been working hard to turn UP around, by attracting new investments to open business, build roads and create new education centres.

Several state-owned companies have opened factories in Rahul and Sonia’s constituency, including SAIL, one of India’s biggest iron and steel producers, Hindustan Aeronautics, an aerospace group and Bharat Heavy Electricals.

However, bringing Gates on board would be a different story. Microsoft was one of the first international IT companies to enter India and since its advent in 1990 it has hired more than 5,000 people and opened 16 offices. If Microsoft were to set a base in Amethi, it could transform the dusty constituency into a new Bangalore or Hyderabad. It would create thousands of jobs, as other IT companies would probably follow suit, and new services would emerge to tailor to the IT community.

Regenerating his constituency and more broadly UP would help Rahul build the credibility he needs to become the next prime minister. However the hard part has yet to come.

Now, he will have to make sure that the reforms, investments and transformations that his famous and powerful friends have promised to the downtrodden people of his state are delivered.