VIEWPOINT
AMITABH SHUKLA
I sometimes wonder why don’t the
sons and daughters of American, Russian and French Presidents, British Prime
Ministers or other countries of the world get nominations from the parties of
their fathers and contest polls. If getting born in the right family is the
criteria for a sharp political brain, why don’t we see the children of big
leaders of the world joining their fathers and mothers in the profession?
Perhaps in USA ,
Russia , France
or Britain
politics is considered not as lucrative as in India
and the children of leaders choose other more paying professions. Perhaps for
the exception of the Bush family in USA in recent years people there have
abhorrence for anything to do with such traditions befitting only the royalty,
perhaps they have out rightly reject the theory that sons or daughters of big
leaders are more capable of leading the parties and their countries than those
who do not have any political lineage.
It requires an empirical study to
find out if children of leaders are born leaders and their parents pass on all
the leadership qualities they have in their genes to their children. But in India ,
all the leaders assume that their son or daughter is the best when it comes to
party tickets and notwithstanding their role in public life, they get party
nominations without any hitch. In fact, most of them claim it to be their
birthright. The moment a child is born in the household of an important leader
in India , it
can be safely said that he or she would someday contest an election.
So now you have a failed
Bollywood star Chirag Paswan, son of LJP president Ram Vilas Paswan as the
party candidate from Jamui in Bihar . Chirag acted in a
forgettable film in the lead role and his co actor was Kangna Ranaut of
recently released Queen, who is now getting critical acclaim for her acting
talent. The film released in 2011 flopped badly at the box office and Chirag
was forgotten once and for all. I remember meeting his father at his Janpath
residence in New Delhi before the
release of the movie. He had great hopes from Chirag and the movie and saw the
next superstar in his son.
As he could not become the next
Shahrukh Khan, Paswan chartered the next best course of action for his son and
this was politics where you do not require any minimum qualification or
popularity. He was first made the Chairman of the Parliamentary Board of LJP. I
don’t know what that means as Paswan was the lone MP from the party in the
Rajya Sabha and they do not have any MLA in Bihar Assembly.
With a new Paswan dynasty
emerging in Bihar , no wonder there are three members of
this dynasty in the fray — Paswan himself from Hajipur, his brother Ramchander
Paswan from Samastipur and son Chirag from Jamui. I wouldn’t be surprised if
Chirag also becomes a junior minister in the Narendra Modi Cabinet, provided
BJP came to power and the electorate of Jamui vote for the Paswan dynasty.
But Paswan dynasty is not the
only bane of Bihar . You have the Yadav dynasty as well,
kicking and rocking, to contend with. Convicted Lalu Prasad, the RJD chief,
cannot contest, thanks to the intervention of Rahul Gandhi who thwarted
Government attempt to bring in an Ordinance to overrule Supreme Court verdict.
But this did not prevent him from nominating his wife from Saran, the seat
which he represented and his daughter Misa Bharti from Patliputra. The claims
of loyalist Ram Kripal Yadav was brushed aside as he was not a family member.
Lalu Prasad’s son, a former cricketer with Delhi Daredevils, too is very much a
part of the entire RJD scene and you could see him soon as chairman of the RJD
parliamentary board like Chirag or a contestant in the next Assembly polls.
You name it and you have
dynasties all around. There is another Yadav dynasty in Uttar Pradesh with
father Mulayam Singh Yadav eyeing the post of Prime Minister post 2014 general
elections while the son Akhilesh Yadav ruling Uttar Pradesh as incompetently as
he can as the Chief Minister. In Tamil Nadu the entire family of Karunanidhi is
in politics and business. In Andhra Pradesh you have Jaganmohan Reddy, the son
of YSR Reddy. But what goes in favour of Jaganmohan is the fact that he has
risen due to his own efforts as he founded the party after the demise of his
father. Of course his huge business empire helped him tremendously and the
credit for that obviously goes to his father.
From Kashmir
(Omar and Farooq Abdullah) and Punjab (Badal dynasty) to
Tamil Nadu, from Maharashtra (Thackeray and Pawar
dynasty) to Meghalaya (Sangma dynasty) — you have little choice. The various
dynasties are around and you have little choice.
Of course, Congress is on top of
the list in which Nehru-Gandhi dynasty has practically been calling the shots
for the last 100 years. This must be one of the longest serving political
dynasties in a democracy and if you remove the emperors of Maurya and Gupta
dynasties in ancient India
and the Mughal dynasty of medieval India ,
the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty must be the longest serving one.
It all started when Motilal Nehru
called the shots in the Congress exactly 100 years ago to Rahul Gandhi now. But
this has been written about to the hilt and has been raised as an election
issue for the last almost half a century. Now the situation has come to such a
passé that you do not find any single important leader in Congress who is above
the age of 60 and who does not have a son or daughter in politics. This
thumbrule applies to all parts of the country where Congress has some presence
and the exception perhaps could be a childless Congress leader.
Sometimes I feel sorry for the
poor Rajmohan Gandhi who has now joined Aam Aadmi Party. Having a perfect
lineage from the family of Mahatma Gandhi, Rajmohan has been in and out of
politics, trying his luck from parties as varied as Janata Dal to the AAP
without succeeding. But then, it was the Mahatma who frowned on the theory of
dynasty in politics and practically banned his sons from entering public life
even as his disciples failed to learn this and unabashedly promoted their
dynasty.
Given the stranglehold of dynasty
even in regional parties, I sometimes wonder what would happen to parties
headed by spinsters — Trinamool Congress of Mamata Banerjee, AIADMK of
Jayalalithaa and Bahujan Samaj Party of Mayawati once they cease to command
influence. Also what about the BJD headed by Odisha Chief Minister Naveen
Patnaik who remains a bachelor?
The BJP has tried to avoid going
Congress way as of now, except in Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan, but then for
how long? In any case, it has also promoted Varun Gandhi only because he is the
grandson of Indira Gandhi and son of Maneka Gandhi, the estranged
daughter-in-law of the former Congress Prime Minister. BJP had to score a
brownie point and it did through the promotion of Varun.
I might not be a great fan of
Rahul Gandhi but at least he tried theoretically, though unsuccessfully, to
bring in internal democracy in NSUI and Youth Congress. Why doesn’t he bring
such a system in the main party of which he is the vice-president? Forget
Rahul, why can’t the legislative system of the country think of bringing a
mechanism in which internal party elections is held in every registered party
of the country and the system is monitored by a statutory body like the
Election Commission? Why can’t someone like Anna Hazare start a movement for
such a reform at Ramlila Maidan in Delhi
the way he did for the Jan Lokpal Bill.
I do not have any problem if a
Rahul Gandhi, Varun Gandhi, Chirag Paswan, Misa Bharti, Deepender Hooda,
Sukhbir Singh Badal, Sandeep Dikshit, Anurag Thakur, Akhilesh Yadav… so on and
so forth, win internal party elections, strictly monitored by a statutory body
and then get a party post. But then if wishes were horses…
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