Family ties

Maybe it is finally time to dispel the bogey of dynasty. The verdict of the 2009 general elections have shown that while nepotism is regarded with distaste and derision in western democracies, India as usual, has its own take on the issue. While the Congress has been the target of much opprobrium from its political rivals for upholding the Nehru-Gandhi clan���s supremacy, very few parties ��� if any ��� have shunned the family factor in the race for seats. Some might say that is only to be expected in a country where scions of erstwhile princely states are still called by their feudal titles even as they are elected repeatedly to the House of the People, but every party had fielded non-royal sons and daughters, spouses and in-laws, with varying degrees of success. When chief ministers and party supremos across the political spectrum have nominated their progeny, and smaller families have also sought to keep their fiefdoms and pocket boroughs, maybe it is time to accept this Indian political dynamic instead of knocking it. More so since India���s voting public does not seem to have held it against anyone for perpetuating dynasty.

The fact that the Obama-Biden duo represents the first winning team since 1976 which did not feature a son or grandson of a US senator went unnoticed in the elections there, is a mark of the perception that nepotism does not pervade western democracies. Nor did anyone comment on the fact that in the current US House of Representatives, 21 members are children of Representatives, and five wives hold their late husbands��� seats. Then why look askance at the descendants of the Gandhis, Scindias, Badals, Karunanidhis having a shy at the 15th Lok Sabha? Winnability, if not performance, seems to have been the yardsticks these scions were measured by, much the same as the non-dynastic candidates. So while the inheritors who won underline the irrelevance of dynasty as a detracting factor, the few of that genre who lost reiterate that exceptions prove the rule. It is time politicians dispense with the dynasty factor as a stick to beat opponents with, and think of something more substantial.