New Zamindars in Mera Feudal India!

In the ongoing electoral dance for the throne in five states, the flavour is pedigree. Be it Ulta Pulta Pradesh, where politics is khandaani business, Punjab where Badals have ‘clouded’ rajniti, Goa and Manipur where the Congress hails the rising sons and Uttarakhand where Hindutva touts familial love. Darlings it’s all about pedigree and invoking the dynastic gods to reap rich political dividends.

A fool-proof way for India’s polity to go to the dogs! Indeed, if democracy rests on the one-man-one vote principle, elections are all about one family and as many tickets as you can wangle norm. The Congress offers Nehru-Gandhi’s Gen Next, the BJP sways to the lilting tune of ‘Betas, Betis and Bandhu,’ forgetting that denouncing dynastic politics and taking a dig at Congress’s “First Family” was par for the course till yesterday.

Shockingly, the BJP has given tickets to 17 sons and daughters out of the 371 doled out in UP. The line-up is impressive. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s son as also slain Cabinet Minister Brahm Dutt Dwivedi, Party veteran Lalji Tandon’s, MP Brij Bhusan Sharan Singh and BSP turncoat Swami Prasad Maurya’s ladlas and ex-Prime Minister Shastri and former Chief Minister Kalyan Singh’s grandsons. In Uttarakhand it is plums for ex-Congress Chief Minister Vijay Bahuguna’s son.

The SP has its own wagon of 21 dynasts, including patriarch Mulayam Singh’s Chhoti Bahu Aparna and Azam Khan’s son and lest we forget, Chacha Shivpal. Not to be left behind BSP’s Mayawati too believes in Bhai-Bahen sambhand and tickets have been freely distributed to them et al.

The regional satraps make no bones about being family enterprises. Be it Lalu-Rabri’s RJD which stands for ‘Pati, Patni aur Parivar,’ Badal’s Akali Dal, Deve Gowda’s JD(S), Chautala’s INLD, Thackeray’s Shiv Sena and Farooq Abdullah’s NC should really be known as ‘Pita-Putra’ Party. And Sharad Pawar’s NCP as ‘Pita-Putri’ Party and Mufti’s PDP ‘Main Hoon Na.’ Underscoring as never before that not only is our political system weak, worse it is dominated by microcosmic monarchies comprising individuals rather than strong political institutions.

Let all be convinced that ideology-based democracy comes after hereditary feudalism, parroting the same hackneyed diatribe. Only our dynasty can provide a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Sprinkled liberally with loads of ‘desh bhakti’ and ‘balidaan.’

What is material is not whether the candidates are deserving but that they are “made deserving,” by virtue of the hereditary factor. Whereby, better qualified, sincere and deserving candidates and committed party workers lose out to sons and daughters who may lack similar intent and competence. Parties, after all, are only a larger extension of the families. Modern day geneticists could learn a lesson or two from our netagan who are past masters in this science. It’s all in the genes, remember.

Questionably, what is about dynasty’s that attract people to it? One, given that a majority of our electorate is ‘angootha chaap,’ people relate to a neta more than the party. Scandalously, at least 29 per cent of the current Indian Parliament consists of hereditary MPs (HMPS), read fathers, mothers, siblings, husbands, wives, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins or in-laws who preceded them in politics.

Unsurprisingly, every MP in the Lok Sabha under the age of 30 has in effect inherited a seat, and more than two-thirds of the 66 MPs aged 40 or under are HMPS and over two-thirds of the 59 women MPs also fall in the family politics category. What next? Parties need to realise that “dynasty” is a sword that cuts both ways. The feudal factor can be a liability than an asset. Plainly, as the aam janata’s awareness of their rights increases, it would be politically prudent to hoot for democracy over dynasty.

By Poonam I Kaushish