Standing on a raised platform festooned with microphones and marigolds, Rahul Gandhi prepared to address a rally of the party faithful of the Indian National Congress. After five weeks on the election campaign trail, he looked very tired.

As the “crown prince” of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, 36-year-old Rahul Gandhi is already being tipped by his supporters as a future prime minister, following in the footsteps of his father, grandmother, and great-grandfather.

However, in a dusty park in Lucknow, the capital of India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, dreams of high office seemed a long way off for the soft-spoken Cambridge graduate.

Rahul Gandhi was campaigning in local elections for Congress — the party of his birthright which has ruled India for 47 of the 60 years since independence — but gone were the days when the Grand Old Party of Indian politics could command the overwhelming support of the masses.

In 1984, Rahul Gandhi’s father, Rajiv Gandhi, swept to power with a stunning four-fifths majority, but in the old quarter of Lucknow this week, only a few hundred turned out to listen to his son.

Although Congress currently heads a messy minority coalition government, a series of defeats in midterm state elections has led many analysts to predict that the party is facing defeat at the next general election before May 2009.

The hope among the party faithful is that Rahul Gandhi can reverse that trend. However, when he spoke — ignoring the rows of empty seats — it was with none of the fire and demagoguery employed by his more populist political rivals.

“If you want to make progress, then we must bring forward our youth,” he said to a ripple of applause. “We must move beyond the politics of caste and religion and provide schools, roads, and hospitals. I am not here only for elections, but for the long haul.”

And yet, despite Rahul Gandhi’s shortcomings as an orator and the fracturing of Congress’s once invincible vote into regional parties based on caste and religion, there are those who still believe he could be the man to refresh India’s jaded polity.

“Rahul is your future. He is sweating it out for you,” Prime Minister Singh said recently. “Let’s make a new Uttar Pradesh, just like Rajiv Gandhi dreamt of making a new India 20 years ago.”

India’s press has also caught the Rahul Gandhi bug, dubbing his progress round Uttar Pradesh as the “son-rise” and speculating daily on whether Rahul Gandhi has the charisma and desire to make it to the top.