Gandhian crusader Anna Hazare's fast for 12 days, televised across the nation round-the-clock, certainly harmed the UPA government immensely as it ended up looking as if it were protecting corruption, but it also threw up an unintended gain for the Congress: to get a mid-term appraisal of its human resources.

It sent out a clear message that the party should take advantage of the younger leaders who have a better understanding and a firmer grip than the old guards on the pulse of the people. The crisis only showed that their views should be taken into account instead of making them always play as the second fiddle. It is to be seen how the Congress cashes on this younger generation of the leadership.

At a time when the government and Team Anna appeared stymied with irreconcilable positions, it was this young leadership of the persons like Sandeep Dikshit, Milind Deora, Jitin Prasada, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Priya Dutt who vigorously campaigned for a solution and finally succeeded.

Of course, the crucial role as an interlocutor was played by Sandeep Dikshit, the East Delhi MP and son of chief minister Sheila Dikshit, who was acceptable to Team Anna despite the corruption charges flying high even against his mother in the Commonwealth Games (CWG) scams. And this was because of his earlier avatar as himself running an NGO and hence knew how the NGOs running the Anna show think and operate.

The Congress old guards felt Team Anna was unreasonable and would resist any kind of talks in the wake of the nationwide support it got as its goal appeared to bring down the government. The youth brigade of the party, however, felt the old guards were themselves blocking any talks and so it swung to action to knock at the doors of the Prime Minister and the senior ministers to realise that it will be too late if the indecisiveness persists.

As a political commentator pointed out, this young generation of politicians have proved to have sharper senses and understanding of the pulses of people and it is time to give them more responsible roles to salvage the image of UPA II in the remaining two-and-a-half years of its term.

He, however, warned not to jettison its proven assets as in the end, the game-changer was not Rahul Gandhi, the face of the young brigade, but Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who showed the political skill to negate all those claim he has none, with an unexpected and impromptu speech in the Lok Sabha suggesting all drafts be discussed in the House. It was an offer few could refuse.

Dr Manmohan Singh took the charge of the crisis management soon after it became clear that the legalistic and administrative approaches of P. Chidambaram and Kapil Sibal, two of the UPA’s finest minds, were not being able to address the political challenge. They had apparently presumed that Hazare was not capable of posing a potent threat because of what they saw as the unreasonableness of his demands.

The PM retrieved the situation by replacing them with Pranab Mukherjee and Salman Khurshid. While Mukherjee engaged Team India in talks to end the stalemate, it was Khurshid who emerged as the government's new crisis manager, preparing rounds for the talks.

It was again the PM who demonstrated the flexibility of tapping experience of Vilasrao Deshmukh in dealing with Hazare and gave him freedom to pursue the crusader in his own way. It is the same Deshmukh about whom the PM had reservations to demote him in the last Cabinet reshuffle only last month.

While Khurshid was softening Anna's team spearheading the massive show at Ramlila Maidan here, Deshmukh established a direct contact with Hazare and persuaded him to scale down his demands by pleading to trust him that some of the issues he was pressing require a long haul and a lot of ground work.

In counting the winners and the losers in the fortnight-long crisis, Rahul’s role remains an open-ended issue as his Friday speech in the Lok Sabha he himself dubbed as the "game-chaner" had little except to dispel any disconnect between the Nehru-Gandhi family and the Government on the Anna issue and throw an academic suggestion to make the Lokpal a constitutional body.

The government’s objective was to concede as little as possible as a cardinal rule in negotiations and it eventually succeeded in doing so as the fast was called off just after an "in principle" acceptance of Anna's suggestions without a vote.

Mukherjee, an all-season trouble-shooter of the Congress, was really upset and wanted to pull out of the talks he was engaged in as he felt Rahul's attempt to give the Lokpal a higher status broke the cardinal rule of negotiations that never offer more than what is being sought. He had a reason to protest since Rahul's zero hour intervention gave an impression that he was grandstanding and speaking out of turn after the Prime Minister had clearly laid down the line a day before.

More intriguing for the Congress MPs and Ministers, including his young brigade, was Rahul's absence in the House on Saturday when the debate took place. Congress sources said Rahul was travelling for a reason associated with the family, though many felt he could have stayed back by adjusting his visit when such an important debate was taking place.

A silver lining for the Government is that neither BJP veteran Lal Krishna Advani, who had publicly sought the PM's resignation and fresh elections barely a week ago, nor his party colleagues harped on their old song of "Manmohan Singh must go."