{"id":53818,"date":"2009-06-06T18:30:59","date_gmt":"2009-06-06T18:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/test.tehelka.com\/?p=53818"},"modified":"2009-06-06T18:30:59","modified_gmt":"2009-06-06T18:30:59","slug":"goodbye-prodigal-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/goodbye-prodigal-son\/","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye, Prodigal son"},"content":{"rendered":"

Voters no longer have patience for political scions who do not perform<\/span><\/em>
\nAjit Sahi<\/span><\/strong>
\n

\"\"<\/a>
Illustration: Anand Naorem<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nWRITING IN<\/strong>\u00a0The Indian Express<\/em>\u00a0last week, Orissa politician Jay Panda tells us the secret behind his boss\u2019s success. Three factors, he says, have won Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik\u2019s three assembly elections in a row. One, a \u201cremarkable level of sincerity,\u201d reflected in Patnaik\u2019s \u201cmonk-like total immersion\u201d in his job; two, a \u201cdeep commitment to good governance,\u201d reflected in his rigorous economic management; and three, a \u201cclinical, dispassionate political decision-making process\u201d that Panda claims did away with \u201cintrigue, lobbying, drama, sabotage, subterranean tests of loyalty, unverifiable caste arithmetic, and even kickbacks\u201d, especially in naming candidates for elections.<\/span>
\nWhat Panda doesn\u2019t list is that Naveen Patnaik is also the son of Biju Patnaik (arguably, Orissa\u2019s most charismatic politician ever) on whose death a decade ago Naveen exited elite circles in Europe and entered Orissa\u2019s politics as a 50-year-old novice. Three elections later, it is clear that the electorate has handed Naveen successive wins more for his work than for being his father\u2019s son.<\/span>
\nThe voter now says, \u201cNo matter what your bloodline, you need more than a surname to get my nod.\u201d As Omar Abdullah, now Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir, found in 2002, when he lost from his father\u2019s \u2018safe\u2019 Assembly seat, and BJP leader Jaswant Singh\u2019s son, Manvendra Singh, discovered this month.<\/span><\/p>\n

Rahul Gandhi talks of intra-party\u00a0democracy, which can sweep out\u00a0dynasties such as his<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Lok Sabha success of the Congress party in Uttar Pradesh this year is credited to Rahul Gandhi\u2019s strategic leadership. Two years ago, the same electorate in the country\u2019s most populous state had handed Rahul a humiliating defeat in the Assembly elections. Yet, despite his spectacular success of 2009, Rahul and his mother, Sonia Gandhi, couldn\u2019t possibly have installed him as Prime Minister, as any move to usurp a position undeserved would surely turn the mood against them. (Incredibly, Rahul now talks of bringing about intra-party democracy, which, if followed through, can only sweep out dynasties such as his.)<\/span>
\nThis is a big deal, considering how Rahul\u2019s father, Rajiv Gandhi, a first-term MP who had never been minister, was sworn in as Prime Minister in 1984 with no other qualification \u2014 not even having won his party an election \u2014 other than that he was the son of the just assassinated PM Indira Gandhi.<\/span>
\nIndeed, it\u2019s debatable if Lalu Yadav could as blithely replace himself today with his homemaker wife, Rabri Devi, as Bihar\u2019s Chief Minister, as he brazenly did to the nation\u2019s outrage in 1997. That spouses, sons and daughters must work hard is evident in the South, where the various children of DMK president and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi, from his three wives are forced to slice up the party cadres as their factions.<\/span>
\nRemember the TDP of Andhra Pradesh? In 1996, the party rank and file revolted against their venerated chief NTR, who had founded the party 13 years earlier. His son-in-law, Chandrababu Naidu, ousted NTR when NTR began imposing on the party his second wife, who was widely seen as a gold digger.<\/span>
\nSon or nephew, cadres and voters want leaders to ably further their vested interests. So, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray\u2019s son Uddhav hasn\u2019t had the same traction with voters as has the old man\u2019s renegade nephew, Raj, who is now usurping the alma mater\u2019s nationalist slogan and votes. Finally, voters expect principled politics and development even from a dynasty, as the father-son duo of former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda and HD Kumaraswamy found out last year, after their humiliating defeat in the Karnataka Assembly elections.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Voters no longer have patience for political scions who do not perform Ajit Sahi WRITING IN\u00a0The Indian Express\u00a0last week, Orissa politician Jay Panda tells us the secret behind his boss\u2019s success. Three factors, he says, have won Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik\u2019s three assembly elections in a row. One, a \u201cremarkable level of sincerity,\u201d reflected in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":53828,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[481],"tags":[8626,2681,8759,8760,8516,1027,3884,5189,4580,8761,868,8762,4523,579,8763,2691,8764],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53818"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}