Only when the SP was found to be unreasonable, did their alliance fail.

Digvijay Singh, who was in charge of UP, told rediff.com on the afternoon of the huge win for his party: "Imagine what would have been our fate if we had accepted the 17 seats offered by the Samjawadi party!"

Then, he said, "You people do not understand Rahul Gandhi."

He explained what exactly worked about Rahul. He said that the presence of Rahul revived old memories of the people in the villages.

"The Congress has a presence in every village of UP. Those people know what the Congress stands for. Rahul went to them and reassured them."

A technocrat friend of Rajiv Gandhi, who also knows him well, argues that "Indian people have changed. People are not complaining too much, now. They are dreaming. They are talking of what they want, not cribbing about the past and history. Rahul Gandhi got connected to these minds that are looking forward into the future."

This is quite true. Rahul raises hopes for the future.

If you read Youth Congress leaders' blogs and message boards on their web site one finds that young Indians seek Congress membership not as an ideological statement but because they think it's a ticket to better jobs.

"Young Indians who are more practical than their parents and value money over political ideology will support Rahul Gandhi wholeheartedly," says a young college boy from Surat who tried unsuccessfully to contest Youth Congress elections in March.

The pictures that were splashed of Rahul Gandhi on the day after the results were telling. At the Congress's parliamentary party meeting he was encircled by his young colleagues who won impressively along with him.

Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sachin Pilot, Milind Deora, Sandeep Dixit, Deepinder Hooda, Naveen Jindal (who was sitting next to him) and Shruti Chaudhary. These are all children of powerful and rich Congressmen. The collective wealth of all those who were with Rahul could not be less than Rs 2000 crores. One would like to believe that they are all well-meaning young politicians who have won because collectively they presented the "clean" image of themselves to the aam aadmi.

Inclusive growth, sensitivity to marginal farmers and labour and minority welfare will be high on Rahul's agenda while Dr Singh through his Cabinet will try to push forward the reforms agenda with more force than before, but success is not guaranteed because after all the Congress's 206 seats out of 543 and 119 million votes out of 417 million votes that were polled does not give it absolute power to rule. The mandate's main function is to have a stable government. The Congress's victory has to be welcomed even by those Indians who have not voted for it because this one verdict has ensured that India becomes an oasis of stability in a turbulent South Asia.

Eventually, if not now, relations with Pakistan will see a shift. Dr Singh will try his best, as soon as the opportunity arrives, to make a forward move.

Now, after the stunning victory in UP, Digvijay Singh says, "We are working for the  assembly elections of 2013 and the Lok Sabha election of 2014."