Sponsored: Understanding India’s dynasty politics

by Siddharth Bhavsar In a recent rally last week BJP’s Prime Ministerial Candidate vowed to end dynasty politics. Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Admi Party has constantly opposed hereditary politics. [caption id=“attachment_1396001” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Siddharth Bhavsar, Founder-Member, Citizens for Accountable Governance[/caption] India’s politics for long has been dominated by a handful of elite families. But what purpose these dynasties served? Was it a good or bad phenomenon? Beyond the criticism of dynastic politics, dynasties have existed and have served a certain beneficial purpose of ‘civilizing society’ because the other alternative was anarchy till democracy emerged and got a chance to mature enough to replace dynasty with true representative democracy. Why Dynasties Emerge ? If an organization is not founded on strong democratic principles like primaries dynasties emerge. These emerge in organizations where the founding team’s leader enjoy disproportionate mindspace in public and then who takes steps to widen this gap. For a threat to arise there needs to arise a set of multipolar power centers. Such multi polarity can emerge if a number of characteristics exist in the system: connect with public, access to resources to mobilize and sustain public support, control over information dissemination infrastructure, and existence of good institutions. In India the Nehru Gandhi dynasty had significant advantage of favorable public perception over which and/or access to other resources which help create and sustain the empire. Dynasty propagates because trust is the biggest commodity in political organizations where a lot of steps are taken that fall in the ‘grey area’ of morality and to protect that coming in public domain or being used against the incumbent leader s/he passes on the reins to the progeny. Parts of the establishment resist it but another part endorses it because of vested interest which gets neutralized. The incumbents family accumulates more control of the resources, deploys more of them to dismantle institutions to keep the status quo. But this trend does not go on forever as has been established across various (empires – dynasty in a democracy is a proxy ‘empire’).So let’s analyze why from history and what/if these apply to Indian political setup. Dynasty in Indian politics can be seen as germinating, propagating and ‘prospering’ right from the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty to regional dynasties like the Karunadhi’s in Tamil Nadu, Patnaik’s in Orissa or the Yadav’s in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. The factors that contributed to ‘germination’, ‘propagation’ and ‘multiplication’ are combination of the factors listed above where the right conditions existed. The Nehru Gandhi family emerged as savior to India post-Independence. Similarly the Laloo Yadav family represent a post Mandal era In Bihar’s politics. Dynasties have a shelf life Are these advantages disappearing? What are the factors removing these advantages? Based on the recent performance of people belonging to dynasties it appear that there is a trend emerging where people no longer are treating them favorably. To understand the why behind this phenomenon we have to understand the natural cycle phenomena of dynasties and the specific catalysts that are contributing to the acceleration of this much needed paradigm shift. It’s a well researched heuristic that the third generation of an organization squanders the legacy of the founder. This happens because as generations pass (15-20 years make a generation) newer generations lose the connect/respect/visibility/mindspace into the contributions of the founding person. Secondly the newer generations of the public get exposed to the lack of performance of the dynasty’s progeny. Is it true that non-performance is tangibly higher in dynasties? It appears so from sociological standpoint. It’s because power corrupts and unless there is a cleansing cycle by change of power corruption due to power increases and inefficiencies and injustices become prevalent. This has a snowball effect where beyond a point it can no longer be hidden from the people despite dismantling of institutions of law and order and compromising the independence of media. It reaches critical mass and leads to rebellion and civil wars if it continues for far too long. ‘Seeds of Change’ It is fortunate for India that before reaching the breaking point we find ourselves in a socio-political environment that is acting like a pressure cooker whistle letting the pressure blow off enough to prevent us for going through the costly civil war part of the cycle. There are a few noteworthy catalysts helping us along: 1. Demographic trends: Emergence of a 300 mm strong educated middle class which has a clout large enough to matter to political class. 2. Deterioration of law and order to beyond an inflection point. 3. Emergence of the world wide web 4. Emergence of social media platforms 5. Main stream media no longer able to hide (2) because of (4) The combination of the 5 above have created an ‘aware’ citizenry which has obtained its education not only from the controlled Macaulay schooling though normal school work but also from the vast open knowledge base from statics content on happenings is developed democracies worldwide as well as conversations with people across the globe. This arms the educated citizen with benchmark information about the performance and possibilities and rights as an individual and also the benefits and feasibility of an egalitarian societal setup. The social media platforms have shaped not only awareness but also provided a platform to transform the ‘awareness’ into ‘action’ by providing easy coordination and communication mechanisms for people to organize and make their voices heard. It has also forced biased media to take notice as it has started to lose its monopoly/strangle hold on the news cycle and ‘projected’ intellectual discourse. In effect it has contributed to creation of a truly independent (social) media, media not in the shackles of vested interests, to finally start acting as the fifth pillar of democracy. Because of this main stream media is forced to provide coverage to deterioration of law and order to beyond an inflection point which brings into fold the not-so-internet-savvy citizens as well which adds to the snow ball effects of awareness and organizing for change. Going forward dynasties have a lot to worry. Siddharth Bhavsar is a founder member, Citizens for Accountable Governance. He is a graduate of University of California, Los Angeles