NEW DELHI For Rahul Gandhi, star campaigner of the ruling Congress party and touted as a future premier, being the torchbearer of India's political “first family” is a source of pride -- but also a millstone.

Rahul has cast himself as champion of India's poor masses while out campaigning in marathon month-long general elections that winds up Thursday, and the 38-year-old is frequently mobbed by fervent supporters.

But critics carp about his lineage -- his family has given India three prime ministers -- saying the dynasty's continued political dominance is at odds with India's emerging economic superpower status.

The man himself has taken a middle ground, saying last week that “just because I'm the outcome of that system doesn't mean I can't change that system.” The good-looking Rahul, whose dimpled face beams from electoral posters, says his position may be “undemocratic but it's the reality. I could do nothing and that would change nothing. But my position gives me certain advantages” to push for change, he told journalists.

He brushes aside talk of becoming prime minister. But the change he talks about does not involve ruling himself out of the running for the job and few analysts doubt he will be the Congress nominee at some point.

Since independence in 1947, power in the Congress has passed from his great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first premier, to his grandmother Indira Gandhi and later to his father Rajiv.

It now rests with Rahul's Italian-born mother, Sonia, party president and seen as India's most influential politician. Many Congress loyalists cannot envisage the party without a Gandhi at the top. However, right now, Rahul says his big goal is to open up India's political process. “I consider it my honour and my duty to change the system of which I'm the result,” he says.

He says he wants to bring in “the aam admi”, or common man, so they have a stake in changing the system.

“I go to the villages where there's nothing and I see people who're amazing, who put us all to shame. The real energy of India is in the villages” and must be unleashed, said Gandhi.

Rahul, general secretary of the Congress's youth wing, says he especially wants to get more young people politically involved and build a party organisation of which “the country can be proud. I've a lot of work to do in the Youth Congress. It will take two years to deliver that organisation.”

With 51 percent of the 1.1 billion population under 25 and two-thirds under 35, the youth vote represents a huge constituency.

The stakes are high for Congress, which would like to recover the electoral high ground it once held, when it alone could form a government. At the moment the party which has ruled India since 2004 at the head of a coalition, needs the help of allies to stay in power.

The appeal of the Cambridge-educated Rahul has a potent resonance among some young voters, where the two leading contenders for the premier's job are way past normal retirement age. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who is the Congress nominee is 76 while L.K. Advani, leader of the opposition Hindu nationalists, is 81.

“I don't like the Congress candidate in my constituency but I'm going to vote for the Congress because I want Rahul Gandhi to become the leader of India” one day, said New Delhi nurse Ambeka Chawla, 25. But others believe Congress and the nation needs to emerge from the Gandhi family shadow.

In 2004, the tragedy-studded family announced Rahul would enter politics, even though his sister Priyanka, 37, who resembles her strong-featured grandmother Indira, is considered more of a political natural. Priyanka says she wants to focus on raising her two young children.—AFP