India's Elections, Dynasty Politics, and Democracy

 

India's Elections, Dynasty Politics, and Democracy

Elections and democracy are complementary in a democratic form of governance. Elections are also an important aspect of democracy. Dynasty politics, on the other hand, is undemocratic. However, in recent decades, it has been seen that dynasty politics has played an important role in the world's largest democracy, India. Its mechanism has been to capture a party (as seen in Congress by Nehru Gandhi, DMK by Karunanidhi, SAD by Badal, SP by Yadav, etc.) or form a party (as shown in NC by Abdullah, TDP by Rama Rao, NCP by Pawar, AAP by Kejriwal, RJD by Yadav, etc.), get it into the family fiefdom by hook or by, As a result, I frequently declare that this is nothing but dynocracy. (Dynasty Democracy) refers to a dynasty that is elected election after election or rules under a democratic system.

Alternatively, one may argue that dynasty politics has stolen Indian democracy and elections.

Here's a fascinating recent example of dynastic politics being justified and how it's justified. Utpal Pannikar, the son of late Manohar Parrikar, the dynamic and popular Chief Minister of Goa and the country's former Defense Minister, was denied a BJP ticket just before the previous election to the Goa Assembly. Let us not address the BJP's denial of a ticket because that is outside the scope of this conversation. Both the All India Trinamool Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party, both headed by dynasties, gave Utpal a party ticket the same day this information was circulated. Of course, Utpal declined the offer for whatever reason(s) are unknown. Utpal Pannikar ran as an independent candidate and lost the election. If he had won the election, he would have formed his own political party in the image of his father, similar to Jagan Mohan Reddy of the YSR Congress in Andhra Pradesh in the early 2010s after his father Rajasekhar Reddy died in an air disaster.

At the same time, we need to talk about why Utpal received the above-mentioned proposals. The solution is straightforward. Because Utpal is Manohar's son, he has the right to inherit his father's political legacy, as defined by self-described "liberal democrats" like Arvind Kejriwal and Mamata Banarjee, who own the Aam Aadmi Party and the All India Trinamool Congress, respectively. This is the custom in Medieval and Ancient India, as well as the rest of the world, where history books are best told. Here, I'd like to remind my readers that the Aam Aadmi Party, which had limited tenures for party office bearers, has now amended the same to allow office bearers to keep the positions they hold for as long as they want, ensuring that its current chief with the title of Convener can stay in that position, just as other dynasty party owners such as Gandhi, Abdullah, Badal, Banarjee, Yadavs, Reddy, Naidu, Pawar.

Following in the footsteps of Nehru, who addressed a Congress Party meeting in Kerala in 1959, Aam Aadmi Party Convener Arvind Kejriwal went on to address electoral rallies in Punjab with his wife and children. So, just like the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty in the late 1950s, creating the basis for the Kejriwal dynasty, hoodwinking those who naively supported Kejriwal's India Against Corruption protest in the early 2010s utilizing gullible Gandhian Anna Hazare.

We currently have the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty in New Delhi, the Abdullah-Mukhti dynasty in Srinagar, Badal in Chandigarh, Pawar Thackeray in Mumbai, Yadav in Lucknow and Patna, Reddy-Naidu in Amaravati, Rao in Hyderabad, Gowda in Bengaluru, and so on, as well as a lengthy list of other dynasties.

Let us briefly explore dynastic politicians' successful democratic function. In the 17th Lok Sabha, 81 percent of members of parliament were dynastic politicians, as shown in the table below:

 

Name of member	Attendance
Abhishek Banarjee	13%
Sukhbir Singh Badal	22%
Farooq Abdullah	49%
Rahul Gandhi	56%
Akhilesh Yadav	32%
Sonia Gandhi	41%
Mulayam Singh Yadav	67%
Chirag Ku. Paswan	48%
Shibu Soren	35%

 

Attendances of dynasty products Supriya sule-93 percent, the daughter of Nationalist Congress Party founder-cum-owner Sharad Pawar-73 percent, are the only saving graces in this above-mentioned aspect. Except for Supriya Sule, who introduced ten private Member Bills, none of the dynastic politicians listed above have introduced any PVB. Except for the father-daughter combo, no dynasty product makes a big contribution to debate participation or question asking.

I am convinced that dynastic politics is one of the primary causes of the spread of freebies, which is nothing more than bribing voters in the name of welfare, corruption, and appeasement politics, all of which are eroding the basic foundations of Indian democracy.

These dynasties are resorting to all types of undemocratic politics in order to stay in power. They steal elections and democracy by giving tickets to their family members and royalists, who may be criminals, anti-social, and anti-nationals at the time, as India had seen Indira Gandhi of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty giving tickets to the 1978 plane hijacker in the 1980 UP Assembly election, democratizing criminals and anti-nationals.

Fortunately, the Indian economy has not suffered to the level that Sri Lanka has, as a result of dynastic politics. However, if no action is taken now, India will quickly become another Sri Lanka, as Abrahamic preachers and Western weapon makers desire. For Sri Lanka, India is there to save her because she (India) cannot afford other countries (such as China) from afar to take advantage of the debt-ridden island nation in India's neighborhood. Note: There is no one who can save India.