Dynasty, Larger Than Life Netas Deny Second Rung Politicians A Spot In The Sun

In 2014, the Badal clan in Punjab was flying high. The patriarch, Parkash Singh Badal, was the chief minister, with his son Sukhbir the deputy. Sukhbir’s brother-in-law Bikram Sin­gh Majithia was a powerful cabinet minister, as was another brother-in-law, Adesh Partap Singh Kairon.

Their party, Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), was a National Democratic Alliance (NDA) ally, and had just ridden the Narendra Modi political tsunami which was poised to crash on the sho­res of power in Delhi.

Sukhbir was perhaps sta­n­ding on the narrow ledge that separates confidence from arrog­a­nce, when he told an interviewer why dynasty is a good political calling card in India. The “family system”, Sukhbir explai­ned, runs on the fuel of credibility.

“Why do people want to buy a Mercedes car? Or a BMW car? Because they know the credibility of that car. You come out with a new car that nobody knows, nob­ody will buy it,” said the deputy CM of one of India’s more prosp­e­rous states.

Sukhbir’s bombastic comment attributed little credit to the party cadre and second-rung leaders. Like in most dynastic structures, the latter accounted for little in India’s second-oldest political party—after the Congress—which was founded in 1920 as the action arm of the Sikh religious body, the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee.

By 2022, the sleek Bilstein shock-absorbers of Badal’s Mercedes and BMW fleet were groaning on the rocky political path. Perhaps there were too many big-framed Badals crammed in a posh automobile, in which Parkash Singh sat beh­ind the wheel, Sukhbir rode shotgun, while his wife, Lok Sabha MP Harsimrat Kaur and her brother Bikram Majithia, sat in the rear with Kairon.

The wheels of the Badal’s dynastic automobile came off in the elections this year. Parkash Sin­gh, Sukhbir, Kairon and Majithia all lost to Aam Aadmi Party upstarts in the assembly polls.

The Congress also lost the polls, but just bef­ore that, it seemed to have identified a serious organisational flaw. A Congress panel led by the Lea­der of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge had narrowed down on the lack of a second-rung leadership in Punjab as a key lacuna.

SAD’s telling electoral debacle does not reflect the ultimate analysis of India’s dynastic politics. But it does make a statement about how parties that rely heavily on dynastic elements or individualistic personality and charisma, tend to come undone in the absence of a credible and empowered second-rung leadership; especially when the tide of popularity of the dynasty or the personality wanes.

The political trajectories of Bihar and Odisha chief ministers, Nitish Kumar and Naveen Pat­n­aik, also make a compelling case for the need of a second line-of-command in their respect­ive parties, namely the Janata Dal-United (JD-U) and the Biju Janata Dal (BJD).

Kumar, 71, has ascended the Bihar throne on seven occasions. In the course of his political jou­rney, he has turned friends into foes and foes into friends (in some cases, many times over), while subtly yanking power levers.

But the sheer absence of a second-in-comm­and in his party does make one wonder what rabbit he would pull out of his paag (a traditio­nal headgear worn in Mithila) to counter this handicap. When it comes to survival, the chief minister has thus far always come up with an answer, but has he planned a roadmap for the party in the era after Nitish Kumar?

The Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), on the other hand, appears to have its succession plan ready. Lalu Prasad Yadav, the ailing party president, would rest easy, knowing his son, Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav’s political career didn’t draw a blank, unlike his stint at professional cricket.

South of Nitish’s turf, along the Bay of Ben­gal, Patnaik, who was once written-off as being too Westernised to run a rural state like Odisha, has proved his critics wrong by becoming chief minister five times.

Patnaik inherited the political legacy of his father Biju. But once in, he split the Janata Dal in Odisha to form the BJD, a party with his own identity stamped on it. Patnaik was much younger, in his 50s, then. Times have cha­nged now. Patnaik is now 75 and unmarried, with no dynast waiting in the wings to take over the party reins, nor a credible second-rung lea­d­ership. Ahead of the 2019 assembly polls, que­s­tions were also raised about his fading health.

Much before he took charge of Odisha, Pat­n­aik was known to party hard. He hung out with rock legend Mick Jagger, and Jac­q­u­e­l­ine Kennedy Onassis. His personal webs­ite describes him as the author of a book The Garden of Life, on Indian healing pla­nts. He also ran a store selling healing herbs in Delhi. One wonders if he has some exotic, her­bal poultice ready to remedy the succession crisis that could potentially confront BJD in the absence of a credible second-rung leadership.

The question of the future of Patnaik’s party is relevant in the present in the case of Bahujan Sam­aj Party (BSP) president Mayawati, 66. Her party was wiped out in recent electoral conte­sts. Her ailing health and the lack of second-­rung leaders in the BSP appear to have impacted its fortunes.

Kanshi Ram, who founded the BSP in 1984, had groomed Mayawati as his successor. May­a­­wati was a government schoolteacher prep­a­ring for civil services examinations when Ram, who was scouting for leaders, landed at her house.

The BSP founder’s pitch to Mayawati was direct. “I can make you such a big leader one day that not one, but a row of collectors will line up with files in front of you, waiting for orders,” according to her biographer Ajoy Bose.

Today, Mayawati appears to have forgotten to follow Ram’s footsteps when it comes to groo­ming her successor, unlike her bête noire Mul­a­yam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Par­ty, whose son Akhilesh has taken over the party baton.

Compared to BSP’s empty larder, the Drav­ida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) seems to be suffering from a problem of plenty. The DMK’s origin is rooted in Periyar Ramasamy’s soc­ial reform movement against Brahminical domination in Tamil Nadu. The party was initially led by C.N. Annadurai, before wri­ter and lyricist M. Karunanidhi took over its reins, inserting his familial DNA into its ethos.

Karunanidhi’s reign spanned nearly 50 years. His son M.K. Stalin is now the chief minister of Tamil Nadu. Stalin’s stepsister Kanimozhi is a Lok Sabha MP. His estranged brother, M.K. Ala­g­iri, a Union minister in PM Manmohan Sin­gh’s cabinet, is now knocking on the party’s doors once again. Karunanidhi’s nephew, late Murasoli Maran, was a Union minister, as was his son Day­anidhi. Stalin’s son Udayanidhi, a film producer, is also an MLA.

Soon after Karunanidhi’s demise, however, the party’s second-rung leaders began clamouring for space within. Ahead of the 2021 state assembly elections, the party’s senior cadre mov­­ed aggressively to corner seats—5,000 of them appl­ying to contest 234 seats in the polls. This surge from grassroots workers is indicat­ive of the lack of middle-rung leaders in the party’s hierarchy who are independent of familial ties.

“With the family so deeply entrenched in the party’s politics, the case for an outsider taking centre stage doesn’t arise. The party’s second rung is too powerless to throw up a leader on their own, ignoring either of the sons and the patriarch,” political analyst Akshaya Mishra wrote in 2011, when Karunanidhi’s failing hea­lth raised the issue of succession.

In contrast, the All India Anna Dravida Mun­n­etra Kazhagam (AIADMK), a party founded by legendary actor M.G. Rama­c­h­andran in 1972, faces a drought of credible successors.

While AIADMK was briefly led by MGR’s wife V.N. Janaki Ramachan­d­ran, the party’s reins were finally wre­sted by MGR’s favourite co-star J. Jay­­a­lalithaa, who became chief minister six times.

Jayalalithaa’s death in 2016 and the fact that there is no obvious successor in sight, has queered the pitch for the par­ty. The AIADMK is now the backdrop for a power tussle between two ex-CMs, Edappadi K. Palaniswami (EPS), now Leader of Opposition in the state assembly, and O. Panneerselvam (OPS). Political commentators suggest that the conflict between EPS and OPS could help BJP occupy the political space AIADMK is vacating in Tamil Nadu.

Across TN’s western border, in Karnataka, former PM H.D. Deve Gowda’s clan holds sway over the Janata Dal (S).

Last year, Gowda’s grandson Suraj Revanna became the eighth clan member to join active party politics. Suraj’s father H.D. Revanna, a former minister, is a sitting MLA. His mother was involved in zila panchayat politics, while his brother Prajwal is a Lok Sabha MP. The patriarch’s son H.D. Kumaraswamy is a former CM, the latter’s wife Anitha is an MLA, and son Nikhil a party youth leader.

The 89-year-old Deve Gowda’s JD(S) is positi­o­ned similar to the DMK when viewed thro­ugh the prism of succession and second-rung leaders, considering that in the JD(S) too, there is a growing demand from below for leaders to cede political space.

The absence of a second-rung challenger to the Gowdas could have also led to lethargy at the top of the JD(S) pyramid vis-a-vis revitalising the party cadre.

North of Karnataka, in Maharashtra, the BJP is readying a transition to second-rung leaders­hip, personified by Deputy Chief Minister Dev­e­ndra Fadnavis. BJP’s recent decision to drop Uni­on minister Nitin Gadkari from a top decisi­on-making body, the central parliamentary boa­rd, appears to be a broad hint. The Shiv Sena too is grooming Aaditya Thackeray as its gen-next leader, while the NCP already has a battery of younger Pawars waiting on the second rung.

Like Maharashtra, the political sphere in Jam­mu and Kashmir too has been dominated by two dynasties—the Abdullahs and the Sayeeds—who have run the Jammu and Kashmir People’s Conference (JKPC) and the Jammu and Kashmir Peoples Democratic Party (JKPDP), respectively.

In the former, the leadership mantle had pas­sed on from Sheikh Abdullah to his son Farooq, and on to Farooq’s son Omar. The JKPDP was founded by the late Mufti Moh­a­mmad Say­e­ed, whose daughter Mehbooba now runs the show.

The dominance of the two families in the region’s political affairs is now being criticised by newer political parties like the Jammu and Kashmir Apni Party, which does not carry a legacy burden. “We know that these families, which have been at the helm for deca­des, have always exploited common people to attain power,” says the party’s president, Altaf Bukhari.

According to JKNC chief spokesperson Tanvir Sadiq, the issue of dynasty does not arise as long as the Abdullahs win elections for the party.

“It doesn’t matter whether there is a dynast or not, as long as the party is winning ele­ctions… People have voted for both Far­ooq and Omar,” Sadiq says.

The JKPDP also insists that Mufti was forced to rope in his family into politics beca­use no one wanted to contest elections due to threats from Pakistan-sponsored militants.

“No one wanted to contest elections… He (Mufti) compelled his family members—including his wife Gulshan Ara, who was a homemaker—to take part in polls,” JKPDP’s Syed Naeem Akhtar Andrabi said.

Haryana too had come to symbolise politics dominated by the Chautalas, Bhajan Lal and Co, Bansi Lal and the Hoodas, but no single Indian political party has carved itself as a model for non-development of second-rung leadership independent of dynasty like the Congress party.

Its second-rung dynasts, Rahul Gandhi and Pri­­yanka Vadra, have repeatedly failed at both herding the organisation together and at winn­ing elections. The party’s historic penchant for regularly blunting the political beaks of promising regional satraps, and its failure to cement a second rung of leaders outside the Gandhi clan, has only added to frequent departu­res and rebellions.

The decline in Congress’ electoral fortunes, and the emergence of a Narendra Modi-pow­e­red BJP, has also witnessed a series of recent rebellions from within, with several seniors, as well as second-rung leaders like Jyotiraditya Scindia, Jaiveer Shergill, RPN Singh, Hardik Patel, Jitin Prasada and Priy­a­nka Chaturvedi quitting the party fold.

Well-known columnist S.A. Aiyer had rung war­ning bells for the Congress in 2013, when he compared the party structure to a family busin­ess, rather than a political party. “Enthusiastic investors seek to become shareholders in this great enterprise, and share in its dividends and capital appreciation. They can even hope to rise to the Board. But only at their peril can they dream of becoming CEO. That post, as in all good fam­ily businesses, is reserved for the controlling family,” Aiyer had said.

In 2011, Pradeep Chhibber, a professor and Indo-Ame­ri­can Community Chair in Ind­ia Studies at UC Berk­e­ley, made a case for how, in the abse­nce of a robust party structure, ind­e­p­­e­n­dent civil society associations that mobilise support for a party, and the presence of a centrali­sed financing of elections leads to the “emergence and sust­enance of dynastic parties in India”. “An explanation developed by economists is that familial ties are more likely to dominate in weakly-institutionalised environments, especially where gai­ns from controlling private benefits are large. A second and perhaps more compelling argument is that in weakly-institutionalised party systems, the leadership remains within a family since a name-­bearing dynastic successor inherits the brand appeal of the surname and the party simultaneously,” his research paper said.

The BJP, on the other hand, appears to have a history of putting forward young leaders. Modi, Gadkari, Uma Bharti, as well as now-deceased leaders like Pramod Mah­ajan, Gopinath Munde, Manohar Parrikar, Arun Jai­t­ley, Sushma Swaraj and Ananth Kum­ar, were thrust into frontline politics by L.K. Advani and A.B. Vajpayee. Modi’s regime has also seen younger leaders like Kiren Rijiju, Smr­iti Irani, Tejasvi Surya, K. Annamalai, Anu­rag Thakur and Devendra Fadnavis positioned in the front trenches.

Chhibber’s oft-quoted research paper also ide­n­tifies the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) as a clear distinction between the functioning of the Congress and the BJP. As a civil society pressure group for support mobilisation, it kee­ps the party clear from reliance on dynasts.

Adam Ziegfield, an associate professor of political science at Philadelphia’s Temple Unive­r­s­ity, also picks out the BJP’s reliance on ide­o­logy as a “bulwark against dynasticism”.

But Modi’s ‘New India’ also encompasses a “new” BJP, where power at the top is concentr­a­ted in his hands and those of Home Minister Amit Shah alone, at the expense of inner party democracy. The era has also witnessed a proliferation of regional dynasties in the BJP, which appear to have cornered opportunities that cou­ld have been grabbed by its second rung drawn from the cadre.

Fadnavis hails from a political family. So do MPs Dushyant Singh, Poonam Mahajan, Jayant Sinha, Heena Gavit, Anurag Thakur, Sunny Deol, BY Raghavendra, Pritam Munde, Piyush Goyal and Jyotiraditya Scindia.

So, has the party—which fashionably raged against the culture of ‘dynasty raj’ not too long ago, and took pride in young leaders it has unearthed over the last three decades—stabilised its political presence on the shoulders of regional dynasties? If that is the case, where does it leave the BJP’s second-rung leaders, drawn from its own cadre?

The Gandhis have a lot to explain for shunn­ing promising second rung leaders, amid the avalanche of electoral failures of the Congress. So do Modi and Shah, under whose leadership, the BJP, with all its electoral successes, has re-inve­n­ted the role of dynasty in Indian politics. Dyn­a­sties backed by the BJP are subserv­ient to the sovereign duo, but they also override you­n­ger leaders with promise from its own stable.

(This appeared in the print edition as "SECOND W‘RUNG’")

With inputs from Naseer Ganai