Our Own Prince

“For the hereditary prince has less cause and less necessity to offend; hence it happens that he will be more loved; and unless extraordinary vices cause him to be hated, it is reasonable to expect that his subjects will be naturally well disposed towards him; and in the antiquity and duration of his rule the memories and motives that make for change are lost…”

Niccolò Machiavelli? 

Of course it is; Il Principe, chapter-II, De principatibushereditariis. (The Prince, of hereditary princedoms).

Why digging the Old Hat out of his graves? 

Because nothing explains so perfectly the current Indian mentality about our most eligible bachelor, Prince Rahul Gandhi. Everybody is wanting to him to see him as the Prime Minister of India. List doesn’t end at Digvijay the old-faithful…..Ashok Gehlot, the Chief Minister of Rajasthan, wants Rahul to be a PM. Uttarakhand Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna wants Rahul Gandhi as a PM in 2014. Even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has openly expressed his desire to induct Rahul into the Cabinet. Even media houses  doing yearly or half yearly roundups of the public mood in ‘favour’ of Rahul Gandhi occupying the top chair of India.Everybody is wanting to him to see him as the Prime Minister of India. Let us see, what are the political peaks our Prince has achieved…

1. Rahul Gadhi's Entry in Politics: 

It was in the 2004 elections that Rahul Gandhi entered politics. He handily won a parliamentary seat from Amethi, an Uttar Pradesh town once represented by his mother and before that, by his father… kinda lolli-pop, no?

2. Rahul Gandhi’s first five years as an MP (14th Lok Sabha) :

i)Attended five debates in five years!

ii)Rahul presented zero private member’s Bill(s) during the 14th LokSabha. Our MP could not find time to present even one in five years.

iii)Rahul asked a grand total of three questions in five years. There were 409 LokSabha MPs who asked more questions than Rahul Gandhi. There were a total of 89,055 questions asked by all MPs combined. Rahul Gandhi’s share was a whopping 0.0034 per cent!

iv)Lastly, Rahul attended 63 per cent of the Lok Sabha assemblies. This was 6.84 per cent less than the national average and 6.9 per cent less than Uttar Pradesh’s average attendance.

3. Rahul Gandhi’s sixth, seventh and eighth years as an MP (15th LokSabha): 

This is from May 2009 when the 15th LokSabha started, till the latest data made available as of end-August 2012. You can download the full data used for this analysis from the official PRS site, clicking here.

i)Here, Rahul attended a grand total of one debate since 2009 till date!!

ii)Again, zero private member’s Bill has been presented by Rahul, like his last term.

iii)To make things look extremely poor, Rahul Gandhi has not asked a single question in over three years!

iv)Rahul’s attendance in the current LokSabha is a mere 42 per cent. Aam admi (read "Mango People") like you and I would be lucky to even hold on to our job if we were to show such disregard to our workplace once and here is the ‘Prime Minister-in-waiting’ who has shown such blatant disregard to his workplace ever since he got the job!

 4.  Rahul’s MPLAD Funds Utilisation:

It’s imperative that people who have voted an MP would be expecting maximum usage of the allocated funds for the development of their constituency. The MP is expected to make an attempt to get maximum funds allotted and utilize the same. Amethi’s people would peg higher hopes on Rahul Gandhi, considering he is the fifth member of the all-powerful Nehru-Gandhi Dynasty to represent them in Parliament.

But facts show his ‘efficiency’ very differently. Of the eligible Rs 14 crore for his constituency, he has managed to get only Rs 6.56 crore released during the current LokSabha term. Compare this with PL Punia getting Rs11.56 crore sanctioned for Barabanki constituency. To make it worse, Rahul has only managed to use 35.35 per cent of the amount released. What a tragedy for the people of Amethi whose MP got only half of the eligible funds released, and spent only a third of that money for the development of his constituency.

[You can refer to this site for details of how MPs of Uttar Pradesh have utilised their allocated Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLAD) funds]

Then what made the Rhahul Gandhi the most eligible person to procure the top seat?? Of course, Rahul Gandhi is the fourth-generation scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and the inevitable leader of the Indian National Congress. So when he stands he bears the shadow of the greatest leaders of India starting from JawharlalNeheru  to Indira Gandhi and that legacy makes him eligible. What else of leadership did we observe in such a back-bencher MP??