VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA
Narendra Modi sold tea at a
Railway station and comes from a lower middle class family having hand to mouth
existence in the tiny Vadnagar of Gujarat. Arvind Kejriwal’s father was a
typical middle class person, worked in a private company in Haryana’s Hisar and
was an engineer by profession. The Delhi Chief Minister himself was an engineer
before he appeared for the Civil Services examinations and got through the
Indian Revenue Services, which he later quit.
On the contrary, the third
prominent leader ahead of the 2014 general elections — Rahul Gandhi — comes
from a family of Prime Ministers and given the family background was never
required to work for a living unlike his main competitor Modi who sold tea and
to a lesser extent Kejriwal who worked in the Government. Rahul’s family
controlled Congress and the Government ever since the country became
Independent 66 years ago except for 10 years and privilege came naturally to
him.
Gandhi is the symptom of the
disease which plagues Congress and the opinion polls are suggesting so even
though the party is refusing to accept it. In 2014, the youth want to look
beyond family, dynasty privilege and patronage. The emergence of Modi and to
some extent Kejriwal clearly suggests so.
But in Congress, it is only the
“family” which keeps you going in politics. Except some of the regional parties
where the family saga is endless, Congress perhaps remains the only party in
the world where the son and if they do not have the son then the daughter,
naturally succeeds the father. Patriarchy and dynasty is the buzzword in
Congress and this is only strengthening its grip even as Rahul himself keeps
harping on superficial experiments like democratising the organisation and
holding primaries before giving tickets. I can safely stick my neck out and bet
that when the final ticket selection is done, at least half of the contestants
from Congress would have MPs, Union Ministers, MLAs and Ministers in State
Governments, former or serving, as their fathers.
Ironically, the de facto prime
ministerial candidate of the Congress had at one time described politics as a
closed system in which one could get entry only through “dynasty and
patronage”. However, he never made any efforts to remove this ceiling and it
continues unabated and in fact has strengthened. You name a Congress Chief
Minister or legislature party leader in a State and you will invariably find
that his son or if he has no son then his daughter is in politics. The latest
in this list is Jaivardhan Singh, the son of irrepressible Digvijay Singh,
former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and AICC General Secretary. While the son
was elected MLA from father’s traditional seat the father got into the Rajya
Sabha not wanting to test political waters in the BJP stronghold of Madhya
Pradesh. This all happened right after Rahul openly abhorred dynastic politics.
Come on, hypocrisy does not pay in politics. People are sharp and they realise
it sooner than later.
The youngest MP of the outgoing
Lok Sabha, Muhammed Hamdulla Sayeed, is the son of Congress veteran and former
Union Minister PM Sayeed. MPs Sandeep Dikshit, Jaganmohan Reddy, Supriya Sule
and Nitesh Rane are all sons of former Chief Ministers.
Haryana is a classic case where
dynasty rules the roost from the ruling Congress to the Opposition. You simply
cannot aspire to achieve anything worthwhile in politics if you are not the son
or daughter of a prominent leader. Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda’s son
Deepender Hooda is not the only son of a neta getting entry due to his father.
Two Ministers in the State Cabinet, Savitri Jindal and Kiran Chaudhary have
their son and daughter respectively in Lok Sabha. While Naveen Jindal is MP
from Kurukshetra, Shruti Chaudhary is MP from Mahendragarh. Kuldeep Bishnoi is
MP from Hisar and may not be in the Congress at present but his father Bhajan
Lal was a Congress Chief Minister for several years. The Opposition Indian
National Lok Dal also is a story of the dynasty of former Chief Minister Devi
Lal.
The list is not exhaustive. Just
do a simple homework. Look at the CVs of the MPs of Congress and the Ministers
in the UPA Government you will clearly find that a lot of them come from strong
political families and it was family and not grass roots work which got them
party nomination and helped in their victory. This is true for almost half of
the over 200 MPs of the party. So there is no moral fabric when Rahul says that
politics is a closed system and dynasty and patronage get you there.
As Congress has turned into a
party of sons and daughters of leaders and there is hardly much scope for a new
entrant, BJP and the Aam Aadmi Party seem to cash in on the sentiments against
such a closed system. In BJP except perhaps for Prem Kumar Dhumal who was a
Chief Minister and his son Anurag Thakur MP and Rajasthan Chief Minister
Vasundhara Raje whose son Dushyant Singh is a low profile MP, the examples are
difficult to come by.
The message is simple. If you
want to join politics and aspire to get a party ticket to fight elections, you
should either join AAP or BJP. The relative openness of the two parties in
getting new candidates is perhaps appealing to the younger generation and is a
contributing factor for the popularity of Modi and Kejriwal. “If a tea seller
can bid for the highest post in the country, why not me?” is the message which
has gone through a lot of educated youth. They might not be aspiring to contest
the polls straight away but obviously their sympathy lies with the parties
where politics has not been closed.
When Congress leader Mani Shankar
Aiyar said that Modi could serve tea to the AICC delegates, it was not a leader
speaking but the attitude which comes through privilege which he enjoyed all
his life as a student of St Stephen’s, Indian Foreign Service, being close to
Rajiv Gandhi, being a MP and Minister in several Congress Governments.
He does not want a non-privileged
tea seller who cannot speak the Queen’s language as a competitor to Rahul. It is this attitude which is being
challenged successfully by Modi and to a lesser extent Kejriwal. (February 10, 2014)
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