RAHUL Gandhi, the scion of India’s first political family, has said he is not driven by the desire for power and that the multiple tragedies suffered by his dynasty have hardened him to personal loss.

Gandhi is widely seen as a likely prime minister if the Congress party pulls off an unlikely victory at tough national polls due within months.

“[I am] battle-ready, of course. We’re going to win,” Gandhi told Arnab Goswami, the editor in chief of the Times Now channel in a rare interview broadcast on Monday evening.

The 43-year-old, who entered parliament in 2004 when Congress returned to power, has struggled to convince voters and analysts, as well as many within his party, that he has the mettle for the brutal rough and tumble of politics in the world’s largest democracy.

He has previously largely shunned the media. Monday’s interview was the first in his decade as a professional politician.

Many analysts believe Gandhi will struggle to confront Narendra Modi, the conservative, Hindu nationalist who is the candidate of the opposition Bharatiya Janata party (BJP).

The Congress-led government has been battered by a flagging economy, soaring prices of basic foodstuffs, and a series of corruption scandals.

Party grandees are also seen as out of touch. One recently mocked Modi — who once helped his father sell tea from a roadside stand before rising to be chief minister of the major state of Gujarat — for his humble origins.

Gandhi’s mother, Sonia, is president of the Congress party and widely considered the most powerful woman in India.

His father, Rajiv Gandhi, and grandmother, Indira Gandhi, were both prime ministers and were both assassinated. His great grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru is one of the founding fathers of the modern Indian nation.

“In my life I have seen my grandmother die, I have seen my father die . . . I have actually been through a tremendous amount of pain as a child. There is absolutely nothing I am scared of,” Gandhi said.

The former management consultant said that he was “absolutely against the concept of dynasty” and that “power is an instrument that can be used for certain things”.

“But for me, it’s not interesting to own it, to capture it or to hold it. Maybe its because of my family circumstances and what happened to my family.

Power per se, the quest for power, the thirst for power, is not there in me. What is there in me is a desire, a strong desire to reduce the pain that people feel,” Gandhi told Goswami, who has a reputation as one of India’s toughest interviewers.

Polls published earlier this week showed Congress “facing an [electoral] meltdown”.

In his interview, Gandhi repeatedly emphasised his vision of “empowerment” of India’s women and of ordinary citizens, drawing a contrast with the opposition.

“The BJP believes in concentration of power in the hands of one person. I fundamentally disagree with that. I believe in democracy, I believe in opening up the system,” Gandhi said.

Modi is close to hard-line Hindu nationalist and cultural organisations and is still blamed by many for failing to protect Muslims during communal rioting in Gujarat in 2002 that left more than 1,000 people dead.

Gandhi repeated the charge made by current Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that Modi had “presided over a massacre”.

“The congress party and the BJP have two completely different philosophies; our attack on the BJP is based on the idea that this country needs to move forward democratically, it needs push democracy deeper into the country, it needs to push democracy into the villagers, it needs to give women democratic powers, it needs to give youngsters democratic powers.

It is about opening the doors of the Congress party, about empowering the youth,” he told Goswami.

If the 150 million first-time voters eligible for the coming polls were clearly one target, many of Gandhi’s statements also appeared directed at stalwarts of his own party.

Gandhi recently took on the old guard of Congress when he publicly opposed an executive order from PM Singh, which would have allowed politicians convicted of criminal charges to remain in office and stand in elections.

However, he argued in his interview that election alliances with leaders who have outstanding corruption allegations against them were links with ideas, not individuals.

The interview may not have allayed the concern that Gandhi lacks the drive necessary to lead his party to victory.

“I don’t go into an election thinking, if we lose it’s the end of the world. We lose some elections, we win some elections. The real thing is that it’s a heart thing. It’s a soul thing,” the Cambridge-educated politician told Goswami.

—By arrangement with the Guardian