The country’s new baba log

The Leader of the Opposition, Sushma Swaraj, seems to be toying with the idea of shifting out of her Madhya Pradesh safe seat, Vidisha.

According to BJP insiders, Swaraj's Oxford-educated lawyer-daughter Bansuri may contest from Vidisha in the 2014 Parliamentary polls.

From Jammu and Kashmir to Kerala, every state is either ruled or going to be soon ruled by the baba log, or the children of powerful parents. Sheikh Abdullah's grandson, chief minister Omar Abdullah, is probably the only one in the league of the Gandhis to have carried on the family tradition of power into the third generation.

But every other politician worth his seat in the legislature --- the Badals, the Dhumals, the Yadavs, the Patnaiks, the Reddys, the Karunanidhis, the Gowdas, the Yedyurappas, the Pawars, the Thackerays, the Scindias, the Karunakarans, the Mahajans, the Mukherjees (the list is endless) --- is getting his or her child to contest an assembly or Lok Sabha seat.

Rahul Gandhi’s assertion at Aligarh that the next government would be that of the youth assumes a totally different meaning in this context.

Already, a large proportion of our young MPs and young ministers like Sachin Pilot, Milind Deora, Jitin Prasada, Jyotiraditya Scindia, the not-so-young G.K. Vasan, the much older Speaker Meira Kumar, are children of former ministers or top leaders.

So, more youngsters joining politics, the legislatures or the governments in the states and the Centre will only mean the perpetuation of the politics of the older guard. Even without a prescription for change, as a polity we seem to be headed for a neo-feudal order: one that is created by the progeny of people’s representatives who wield the power to bar outsiders from getting into the elite club.

For instance, if 70 is the new retirement age for politicians, about 20 ministers, including the Prime Minister, defence minister and home minister will have to drop out of the race completely.

Can a younger crop step into their shoes, seamlessly? If so, who will they be? Are they going to be the children of the same political class, which grew up insulated from the heat and dust of our poor villages?

Politics is different

Our corporate world hardly has a handful of first generation entrepreneurs.

Lawyers often inherit their briefs and books from their ancestors and many in high judicial offices are children of famous judges.

Most bureaucrats, accountants, journalists, doctors, engineers and even actors pass on the passion or even push the reluctant progeny into their profession.

So, politicians could possibly argue, ‘what is wrong in their hard earned legacy or goodwill getting inherited by their own instead of somebody else’s children?’.

But then, politics is not a private enterprise, and constituency is no capital, which can be bequeathed to a son or a daughter.

The notion is as presumptuous as a bureaucrat claiming that his son should be made a bureaucrat.

Well, doctors and engineers now buy seats in professional colleges for their children, but they have to complete their courses and compete in the open market for jobs.

The prime problem with the politics of progeny practised by almost all the parties in the country is that most leaders assume that they have earned a party ticket to the legislatures for their children. The leaders of parties only earn power for themselves. Their children should ideally compete with the rest for their respective party tickets.

Election cannot be the only criterion to weed out the failed ones because if in a bipolar contest both the mainstream parties put up children of their respective leaders, one of them will win, however bad he or she is.

So, an electoral contest cannot be the only test of character of the candidate, particularly in large unwieldy, impersonal, Parliamentary contests. The first filter ought to be within the party, which is now non-existent.

Entry criterion

A retirement age is a welcome exit button for politicians who just refuse to fade away. We need to be ruled by people in their forties, fifties and sixties, and definitely not by octa-nonagenarians.

But when the older ones are to be replaced we need to look beyond the familiar surnames. Of course, being a first generation aspirant is no guarantee against corruption. There is every possibility that a new-comer is worse than a third generation politician. But without a surname to keep him afloat, a corrupt or inept newcomer may sink easier into oblivion than a member of a “political family”.

The parents now pass their passion for power to their children, who slip into dad’s or mom’s kurta and start a career smelling of the same old perfume of power. The kurta needs to be soiled by the sweat and dirt of the Indian countryside.

The children need time to learn to solve the problems of the poor. After all, it took Rahul 10 years and an impressive tally of 22 Lok Sabha seats from Uttar Pradesh to be hailed as a Prime Ministerial candidate.

Let the ‘baby people’ spend, at least, 10 years with the masses before they are declared “minister-material”.

It would still be better if all parties decide to have an internal quota of just 20-25 per cent of tickets for the baba log. Only then can our democracy be truly diverse and inclusive.