24 Akbar Road [Revised and Updated]

Book excerpt: Now updated with a new chapter on Rahul Gandhi The Congress party has always stayed one step ahead of the opposition by constantly reinventing and re-aligning itself to stay in sync with the political realities of the day. Its president, Sonia Gandhi, pulled off a master-coup in 2004 by declining the prime-ministership, while the incumbent Congress Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh is the first prime minister since Nehru to lead the party into two Union government terms. In 2013, Rahul Gandhi was elevated to the post of Congress vice-president amid much fanfare and optimism. Tasked with reviving the grand old party, the young politician remains, in the minds of many, the best hope to lead the Congress into the next century, marking a new moment in the Congress’s concept of ‘continuity with change’. In his bestselling book 24 Akbar Road, seasoned journalist and veteran Congress watcher Rasheed Kidwai puts together an incisive and engaging account of the Congress’s shape-shifting nature and its tenuous hold at the Centre, providing a dispassionate observer’s glance at affairs within the Congress. Kidwai brilliantly tracks the story of the contemporary Congress in the years after the Emergency, using the Congress seat of power at 24 Akbar Road as his vantage to draw a compelling account of the Congress leadership from Indira, Sanjay and Rajiv Gandhi to Narasimha Rao and Sitaram Kesri, to the present- day trinity of Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi. In this revised and updated edition, Kidwai analyses Rahul Gandhi’s appointment to assess what the Congress needs to do to remain India’s nerve of power in the coming years, and whether the new vice- president can rally the party to a third consecutive victory at the Centre.'