Politics of inheritance
Vir Sanghvi

The first thing that needs to be said about the Cabinet-making exercise is that it took far too long. The results came in on a Saturday and by the following Saturday there still was no government in place. We had to wait a further six days something like 12 days after Manmohan Singh had been re-elected to know who the new ministers would be.

That said, there’s no doubt that the Prime Minister and his party have much to be proud of. By most standards, this is a well-chosen ministry with well thought-out portfolios. The obvious crooks have been kept away from the money-making ministries (at least in the case of the Congress ministers) and there is every reason to expect that those who have been appointed will now deliver.

My concern is less with the portfolios than with the provenance of many of the ministers, and indeed, of those MPs in opposition.

If you had any doubts that politics in India has now become a family business, you need only to go down the list of newly-appointed ministers. A disturbing proportion of them were born into political families.
Farooq Abdullah is the second generation of the political dynasty founded by his father Sheikh Abdullah. (His son Omar is Chief Minister of J&K.) Prithviraj Chavan is from a well-known Maharashtra political family. Salman Khurshid’s father was a minister in Indira Gandhi’s government. Dayanidhi Maran is the son of Murasoli Maran, a minister in A.B. Vajpayee’s government and is a close relative of M. Karunanidhi. Selja is the daughter of former Union Minister Choudhary Dalbir Singh.

G.K. Vasan is the son of G.K. Moopanar. M.K. Azhagiri is the son of M. Karunanidhi. Parneet Kaur is the wife of former Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh. Ajay Maken is the nephew of noted Delhi leader, the late Lalit Maken. Bharatsinh Solanki is the son of former External Affairs Minister Madhavsinh Solanki. D. Purandeshwari is N.T. Rama Rao’s daughter.

Tushar Choudhary is the son of the former Gujarat Chief Minister Amarsinh Choudhary. Jyotiraditya Scindia is the son of Madhavrao Scindia. Sachin Pilot is the son of Rajesh Pilot. Jitin Prasada is the son of Jitendra Prasada. R.P.N. Singh is the son of former Union Minister C.P.N. Singh. Prateek Patil is the grandson of former Maharashtra Chief Minister Vasantdada Patil.

Agatha Sangma is the daughter of former Lok Sabha Speaker Purno Sangma. D. Napoleon is the nephew of former state minister K.N. Nehru, who made him his personal assistant.

I could go on but it would be wrong to focus only on the Cabinet. Even within the non-Congress parties, politics is about dynasty. Naveen Patnaik is Biju Patnaik’s son. Chandrababu Naidu is NTR’s son-in-law. The Janata Dal in Karnataka consists largely of H.D. Deve Gowda and his son. In Punjab, the Akali Dal is a family business run by Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal and his millionaire son, Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal.

There are political parties that are largely free from dynasty but even there, family connections are all too apparent. The BJP in Rajasthan is full of second-generation leaders: Vasundhara Raje is the daughter of the Rajmata of Gwalior, her son Dushyant Singh is an MP. Manvendra Singh is the son of that noted Gurkha leader Jaswant Singh and so on. Elsewhere in the party there are many with family connections: Ravi Shankar Prasad’s father was a stalwart of the Sangh Parivar and even L.K. Advani’s son has said that he is not averse to entering politics.

The young dynasts offer many explanations. First of all, they say, it is an Indian tradition for people to follow in the footsteps of their parents. If actors, doctors and lawyers can do it, then why not politicians?

Secondly, they argue, India is a democracy. No politician can nominate his or her son or daughter to any post. Every one needs to be elected. And as long as the voters are content to elect dynasts then who are we to object?

Both explanations have their strengths but neither is particularly convincing. A doctor is welcome to nominate his son to take over his practice. But medicine is quite different from politics, which is in the public domain, where representatives are supposed to emerge from within the people, not spring forth from the loins of senior politicians.

The other argument is a little more convincing but it is almost exactly the same as the defence offered by every gangster, mafia don and hoodlum who enters politics: if I am so bad, then how come people elect me? And if people elect me, then how can you object?

But the point is: we do object to criminals joining politics, even if they win elections. And I think we are as right to be concerned about the children of politicians dominating the electoral process.

HT