Thursday, May 26, 2011

Son Rise

A report in recent Hindustan times says that in his recent book India: A Portrait, Patrick French points out that all MPs under the age of 30 are hereditary. More than two thirds of 66 MPs under the age of 40 are hereditary. Of women MPs, 69.5% are hereditary. If the present trend continues, the Indian parliament will soon be made up of only hereditary MPs and India will be back to the era of the princelings and their kingdoms.

How true. This is so all-pervasive that this phenomenon cuts across almost all parties big and small; national and regional.

In Mulayam Singh's Samajwadi Party, his brother and sons are not only MPs but call the shots. In TRS, we hear and see only father, son, nephew and daughter. DMK is full of sons, nephews, grand nephews, daughters and what not. TDP was a pocket borough of one NTR till he was literally shoed out by his son-in-law. Now we are waiting with bated breath for the sons' rise - Lokesh and Jr.NTR. Ofcourse Congress is the mother of all nepotism starting with Moti Lal Nehru. The new offshoot of Congress in AP is brazenly hereditary, even in its name. BJP & communists are exempt from this may be because they are in the vice-like grip of humorless bachelors.

Initially people thought that this is due to the name tag as average Indian is still rooted in feudal mindset. Also, in case of deaths, sympathy factor rather than effectiveness works. The networking is ready on a platter.

But there are other reasons as well, the chief being money. Nowadays, elections are very costly affairs and the party generally gives ticket to winnable aspirant who can finance his/her contest. Secondly, in case of death of a sitting member, the family members alone have access to the stashed funds.

Today we see the jaded likes of Sathes pumping for Priyanka Vadra. We can understand their desperation. They always climb on others shoulders and cant win a municipal election on their own. There is also the orchestrated 'desires' like that for Lokesh in Chandragiri. Imagine 'Seniors' like Yerrannaidu and Ramakrishnudu keeping mum over the foisting of the 'son'. They have no option.

Why can't we switch over from de-facto to de-jure by legally doing away with elections and institutionalizing Aristocracy. We can then avoid, costly, corrupt, violent elections with the same results.

…Ponder