On Baba-log and Mummy Papa MPs
I woke up today morning to this article, thanks to Ashutosh: “The Princely State of India“ by Patrick French. As Ashutosh wrote in his email:
(It is) Rather long but I read it “atha to iti†and found it fascinating for the rigour and detail…Importantly, the question in my mind now is that with this insight, how does one beat the odds? Is it even possible? I feel that the strategy to subvert this is somewhere out there…
I will reserve my comments for now. In the meantime, read and despair…Excerpts below (emphasis added):
It had first become apparent to me during the 2004 election campaign, and it niggled again now. The problem was the first-time MPs. With their spanking faces and sense of bland entitlement, these young men and women were treated with reverence by the Indian media, although their achievement was usually to have shared genes with an earlier leader. I watched one of these new MPs on television as he drove through the dust of his inherited family constituency in an enormous Pajero, turning now and then to a waiting camera with a purposeful frown and saying things like “I want to help these people, like my father did†or “We are going to make India No. 1.†He looked like a giant baby who had been dressed up and put in a big buggy and sent off on an adventure.
Their (hereditary MPs) usual justification, really a technical defence, was that they had been elected—ignoring the fact that almost no one else stood a chance of gaining the nomination
…Nearly all aspiring politicians with a family connection did everything in their power to exploit it. When campaigning in 2009, Rahul’s cousin, Varun Gandhi, said the Congress-led government was spineless and that “wherever I go, I am told that if Sanjay Gandhi had been alive, the country would not have got reduced to such a mess. The practice of nepotism in politics was so taken for granted that its effect on democracy in India had never been fully quantified. I was left wondering how deep the dependence on pedigree ran. Had it been this way for decades, or was it getting worse? What was the effect of a closed structure on bright, qualified people who might otherwise have entered public service? They knew they were more likely to get a break in business, or in a stable profession, than in this hereditary system. A stream of potential talent was diverted at source, away from politics. Would a self-made man like Rajesh Pilot have got anywhere if he had been born in 1975 rather than in 1945?
There is more…From TheIndiasite (maintained by Patrick and his friends):
33 out of the 38 youngest Lok Sabha MPs across parties are hereditary * 70 per cent of women MPs are dynastic politicians * 9 out of 10 Congress MPs under 40 are from a political family * trend accelerating rapidly..
Depressingly,
..All MPs whose age is less than 30 years are hereditary..More than two-thirds of MPs aged under 40 are hereditary…27 MPs are ‘hyperhereditary’, and 19 of them are in the Congress party. By hyperhereditary, we mean that they have several family members who have made a career out of politics.
Graph, courtesy: TheIndiaSite.com
I hope to upload the entire report and data on the “Docs and Slides” widget on the Resources page later today. In the meantime, comments and thoughts welcome. Please share widely with those interesting in and working towards the cause of political reform in India.
Related Post: On neo-feudalism, Baba-log and dynasty politics
I think families cornering judicial power is the worse thing for India. Recall the “uncle judges syndrome” and Allahabad HC wanting to get SC’s remarks expunged. http://www.indiareport.com/India-usa-uk-news/latest-news/956989/National/1/20/1 . India has crossed several dangerous thresholds simultaenously and the people are asleep.
I think it’s important to ask what it is about hereditary politics that bothers us.
We don’t get bothered when a doctor’s child becomes a doctor, or a businessman’s children inherit the business, or a military person’s children join the military. This “family syndrome” is common in all spheres of life. It’s also somewhat natural. Growing up in a certain environment promotes picking up the nuances relevant to the profession — I would bet that on average businessmen’s children do better in business than children of say an engineer because they pick up some business savvy while growing up. The same goes for politicians.
This trend of political families is present even in the USA, one of the stronger democracies. And in the USA, it seems not to have had such bad effects (though some would point at Dubya and disagree). Finally, in a free society it’s inappropriate to tell anyone not to become a politician just because his uncle or dad is also a politician.
Family politics has been very bad for India, though. There are some obvious differences between politics and other professions.
A bad politician affects us all, while a bad businessman affects mainly his own family. But this doesn’t apply to doctors or military personnel.
Most professions don’t have the kind of protectionism we see in politics because they are subject to some sort of market forces. Bad doctors will lose their patients, bad businessmen will (usually) lose their money, bad engineers will lose their jobs, and bad armymen will be punished during training.
But bad politicians get away with everything, because politics in India is without rules. Politicians are at the top of the food chain. They are answerable to the people via voting, but are able to use their clout with the media and the police and the CBI and the Income Tax department to manipulate people. THAT is what we should try to stop. In other words, we need much more accountability and transparency, to the extent that the power of politicians is cut.
So, I think hereditary politics is a symptom and not the disease. It cannot (and should not) be disallowed. The disease is a lack of accountability and transparency and too much power. That is what needs fixing.
Politics is the game of achieving power and if we want to change dynastic politics we have to change the nature of the rules by which power is concentrated. We must push for a constitutional change that does not allow the immediate kin of a minister to take over any ministry. There should be a difference of at least 30 years. This is an unique resolution but our problems are unique. We also need to push for a not-more-than-two-terms rule.
More rulers comes from the dynasty more they will be detached from reality. During Sanjay’s early years of excesses, Indira was completely unaware of what was happening. Rajiv commented that most of the money he spent for poor ended up getting wasted as if as a PM he has no power to stop that. Why were they so uninformed or helpless? Because people surrounding them ensured that they get a warped view of the reality. People like Rao or Vajpayee did better because they at least knew the effect of existing policy on common people, Gandhis do not. Recent comment by clown prince on Hindutva terror expose the disconnect strongly.
Please note that this is also the same problem with a monarchy. A monarch fails completely when he gets insulated from his subjects and no accountability can be demanded from him. A democratic system is supposed to solve this problem by placing elaborate checks and balances on the system and forcing the elites to face common people during the regular elections. Disconnect with reality is a strong failure of the dynastic leadership, in the long run this would ensure their demise. What troubles me is that if that does not happen soon enough, we may end up with a violent uprising that would push the country to a direction which would completely dissolve whatever little advance we made.
@Armchair (#3),
"We don’t get bothered when a doctor’s child becomes a doctor, or a businessman’s children inherit the business, ..."The problem with your logic is that governance can not be viewed like any other career. We do not say that the son of a IAS become a IAS automatically. If son of a doctor can not treat me, I will go to a better doctor, I have no obligation to consume the product of a family business if it is not good. On the other hand, if a PM is incompetent, we do not have a choice for a long time. Governance is a too important business to be left without a regulation. Choice is the key here.
To be honest, we all got used to it. surprisingly this has gone so far into the system that now the daughters and sons of the politicians feel that it is their fundamental right to take over their parents legacy or be part of the the system somewhere else because they have a politician in the family. I am sure we are all following the situation in Andhra Pradesh. The only claim to power that Mr. Jagan mohan reddy has is that he is the son of the CM. He is first timer into parliament and he assumed that the CM throne is his after his dads gone. Such is the political system. I think the best thing is the pass a rule where only person from a family can be either a MP or a MLA and all others disqualify automatically irrespective of daughter or son.
@Sid:
That’s what I said later in my comment.
My point: the outcome of this line of thinking is that it’s not the doctor’s son you object to — because you can go somewhere else. If that were TRULY the case with politics, we wouldn’t have a problem. This is what I meant by accountability and transparency: IF we have these two qualities, we can judge young MPs based on how well they do and their parents can’t protect them.
@Arm chair (#7),
On a second read, yes that is what looks like.
Although, the article concentrates mainly on Loksabha membership, if one were to look locally one wouldn’t be surprised either. In Pune, I see big hoardings either congratulating one on his/her B’day or on getting elected to some irrelevant post in the party. More often than not the person being congratulated is kin of local political honcho.
So what? That is democracy. Do you want to legislate against that? Then discuss the pros and cons of that. But this discussion is useless.
From Ruling a Banana Republic Does not Require Special Qualifications by Atanu Dey:
The third scenario, however, is not far-fetched at all. In your average banana republic, it is rather common for the son or daughter of a corrupt tyrant to inherit the job of misruling the country. The only special talent required for the job is that one is especially devoid of all morality and conscience. It is not as if keeping a desperately poor country desperately poor takes any effort. If your father could steal billions without too much trouble, you too can do it. You know how he did it, and so can you. He developed that skill and you got to see how it works. You got to know all the crooked people that your esteemed dad did business with. You inherited all the contacts that he had. That’s perhaps as striking an example of Lamarckian evolution — the inheritance of acquired characteristics — as you can find anywhere.
@Morris (#10),
Democracy is not a holy cow. It is a system that needs to be adjusted according to the nation/society it is implemented in. Every other country in SE Asia, whether they are democratic or not, experienced the same family rule in one form or other (Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia etc). In West, family structure is rather weak so such a safe guard may not be needed. In India, it is very strong. It is only natural that democracy would walk towards the system that we currently have. It is time we build a safe guard to protect our right to choose.
Sid
“Democracy is not a holy cow”
Of course NOT. But find a holier cow.
“It is time we build a safe guard to protect our right to choose.”
Yes indeed. But how? Propose a way to do it and try to convince others that your way is better.
Just in: Kin of party leaders figure prominently in Punjab Cong list
More from Patrick French…An excerpt from Father, son and unholy politics dt May 4, 2012
…The BJP and the parties of the Left were reasonably meritocratic, but nine out of 10 Congress MPs under the age of 40 were hereditary politicians—mere mortals were out of luck.
The survey was widely reported, prompting some readers to ask whether it really mattered that politics was turning into a family affair.
…
My answer was that as a real democracy, India needed to have a route to public service that was open to all. A national parliament is required by its very nature to be representative; a butcher’s shop is not.
But there was something I was left wondering—were India’s hereditary MPs also the richest? Or, to put it another way, what is the correlation between wealth and heredity in politics today? It is a question that has now been answered by Aaditya Dar
…His number crunching shows that wealth and heredity correlate very closely indeed.
Here are the new headline findings: Mummy-daddy MPs are on average a whopping 4.5 times richer than MPs who have no family background in politics.
…If you rank the 20 richest MPs in the Lok Sabha, 15 are hereditary politicians and 10 are members of the Indian National Congress.
Not so long ago, Indian MPs often lived in austerity. This is still the case for a few, but the change has been dramatic.
More than ever before, those in political families have a monumental double advantage: they are twice-born, handed both money and power at birth. Day to day folk have little chance of entering Parliament.
One more joins the club:
http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/pranab-mukherjee-s-son-wins-jangipur-by-poll-279209
Concluding lines from Every ‘young’ minister in new-look UPA govt is a dynast by Vivek Kaul Oct 29, 2012:
(Patrick) French puts it best when he says“If the trend continued, it was possible that most members of the Indian Parliament would be there by heredity alone, and the nation would be back to where it had started before the freedom struggle, with rule by a hereditary monarch and assorted Indian princelings.â€