Rahul Gandhi will be Congress President soon. After he emerged the lone candidate for the post a week ago, much has been said about the challenges he faces in his new role. Expectations are certainly high. Party workers are looking up to Rahul to steer the Congress to its former glory and, outside the political domain, there is hope that he will push for saner economic policies and take on the Hindutva brigade and its corrosive faux-nationalism.

And all this has to be undertaken in the face of a ruling dispensation not averse to bending the conventional rules of political combat, and an unfriendly, if not hostile, corporate sector-electronic media nexus.