If in the initial many generations in politics, parties grow (or shrink) as if they are family properties, the fighting spirit that politics must encourage among cadres to earn their spur is flattened, and low-level loyalties reign
Reports from the film world claim that the Aamir Khan-starrer Dangal has grossed the largest ticket sale for the first three weeks since its release, at Rs350 crore. Imagine how much more would have been collected by newspapers and other media had they charged every viewer/reader for all the daily diet of the political dangal (wrestling) going on in several States, political parties and their Governments since the last month!
Thanks to these reports of wrangling and back-stabbing, politics seems to entertain as much as, if not more than, what Aamir Khan and other film producers and their imaginative plot-makers can offer. The variety is nationwide and with new actors on the prowl.
In Kerala, you thought the recently come-to-power Marxists would be a paragon of virtue, as corruption charges against the then incumbent Congress-led Government was the main cause of the latter’s defeat. But no, you are mistaken. Right now, Marxist virtues have been overtaken by the capitalist equations that say blood is thicker than water.
One Marxist Minister has been forced to resign as she has been caught appointing her relatives in juicy positions in public sector undertakings (PSUs) under her Ministry. A court probing a murder case has ordered that another Marxist Minister be included as a prime accused in that particular event that happened before his party’s Government came to power just a few months ago.
Kerala’s ruling Marxists are riven by mutual accusations even as Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has succeeded in cutting to size nonagenarian former leader and former Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan within the party hierarchy. For a more comprehensive view, read the Kerala dailies or view the local channels of the State.
Such ‘capitalist virtues’ like corruption, nepotism, backstabbing are allegedly dug out by the Union Government agencies with equal ferocity in Kolkata too. The State Government of the Trinamool Congress was voted for a second time to power because its opposition to the incidents of Marxists-in-power, who were for 35 years at a stretch ruling West Bengal, was still fresh in the minds of the Bengali electorate.
But right now it is the Trinamool big fish whom the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and other vigilance agencies are holding. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is a fighter to her bones and the political world in the country had admired her determination to get the Marxists out of the State Government. With the shadow of corruption in the State over chit funds scams falling on the respected leaders of the TMC now in Government, Banerjee seeks to secure her and her party’s image by diverting the public anger against different Ministers of her Government, towards the incumbent Union Government.
As if in a break in the tradition of leadership of regional parties passing on from father to son, in the most important election battlefield of Uttar Pradesh, it is father versus the son in the current ruling Samajwadi Party. Reporters with a life-time of political coverage behind them, are also perplexed as father and son (and uncles and more uncles) change positions and statements every second hour.
The BJP, all set to conquer, should be laughing away when its rivals are keen to offer the State to it, so to say, on a platter. Analysts say that for the young Chief Minister, the ‘young’ Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi is good company to lure the young voters in the State.
The young-young combination rather than a young-old combine had the son chosen to follow the father. Behind this drama being played out in the Samajwadi Party for public edification or entertainment (take your pick), the long-time king-maker in the crafty Amar Singh, is playing second fiddle.
You have much to entertain further south back again. First, the long months of hospitalisation of the popular icon and Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa, who also headed her party as general secretary. You saw the AIADMK cadres and loyalists holding long prayer sessions invoking the gods to save their iconic leader.
Who would succeed her at the head of the party and the GovernmentIJ There were no immediate claimants as she was a spinster (like Mamata Banerjee). Her constant companion, Sasikala Natarajan, was the party’s choice. No one from the party’s leadership was fit for the job, though a party leader finally became the Chief Minister.
Emotion rather than political experience and work in a political party is the decideratum. Why notIJ What was Rajiv Gandhi’s political experience when, from being a commercial pilot he was pitch-forked into prime ministership overnight (a three year job as party general secretary in between is too short for political training)IJ It was because he was his mother Indira Gandhi’s son.
In Tamil Nadu, too, you can’t ignore relations. Jayalalithaa’s relations have just emerged and their claim is been projected. Whatever might be the result of the power struggle, there is likely to be more dangal shows in the State’s politics.
For, in the rival DMK also, as patriarch M Karunanidhi is moving into his sunset years, it is the younger son Stalin, who has been crowned for succession by the patriarch himself. How far the older son who can follow only Tamil, will take it lying down, remains to be seen.
The showcasing of struggles for power is common in all democracies, but the final decision comes from political cadres and voters. It is largely in our country that political families rule from generation to generation, with the Nehru-Gandhis showing the way for successive generations.
To recall, even Jawaharlal Nehru was at the Congress’s top, courtesy his charismatic and rich father Motilal Nehru, who pleaded with Mahatma Gandhi to let a young Jawaharlal preside over lahore meet of the Congress, though he was a new entrant into the party. The Nehru-Gandhi (Parsi Gandhi and not Gujarati bania Gandhi) family rule began thus.
If in the initial many generations in politics, parties grow (or shrink) as if they are family properties, the fighting spirit that politics must encourage among cadres to earn their spur is flattened, and low-level loyalties take its place. It is the old monarchy, not a democracy, that emerges. leaders seek to win support through offer of freebies and juicy jobs to loyalists.
It is worth a clinical study as to how family loyalties in politics and not perception of quality leadership capabilities led to glass ceilings in all walks of life, how birth patterned India’s political journey and depressed the fighting spirit among the common people. Politics as a family dangal may be a great entertainment, but is surely not good for the health of our democracy.
(The writer is former Rajya Sabha member from the BJP and Delhi-based political and social analyst)