'Youth brigade' stirs up Indian
politics By Sudha Ramachandran
BANGALORE - With several states going to
the polls this year and general elections due
before mid-2009, India's grand old party, the
Congress, is trying to get itself a facelift
through an infusion of some young blood.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's expansion
of his council of ministers last week saw the
inclusion of seven first-timers, two of whom are
young members of parliament (MPs), 37-year-old
Jyotiraditya Scindia and 34-year-old Jitin
Prasada, both junior ministers in the Information
Technology and Communications, and Steel
ministries, respectively.
The expansion
was expected to include two more young MPs -
37-year-old Rahul Gandhi and 30-year-old Sachin
Pilot. But Gandhi turned down the offer of a post
as junior minister in the
Prime
Minister's Office, ostensibly to focus on
revamping the organization of the party.
Additionally, caste politics in his home state,
Rajasthan, appear to have tripped up Pilot on his
way to becoming a minister.
Gandhi,
Scindia, Prasada and Pilot are part of what is
often referred to in India as the Congress' "youth
brigade". Priya Dutt, Milind Deora, Sandeep
Dikshit, Deependra Hooda and Naveen Jindal are
some of the others in this group. Young and
educated - either abroad or in India's elite
schools - as well as privileged, urban and urbane,
they are the Congress' "Generation Next". What
also unites the group is that most of them are
political heirs of their parents, who are, or
were, senior Congress leaders.
Leading the
youth brigade is Rahul Gandhi, whose
great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru, grandmother
Indira Gandhi and father Rajiv Gandhi were all
prime ministers of India. His mother Sonia is
Congress chief and arguably the most powerful
person in India. Scindia is a scion of a royal
family from central India and son of the late
Congress minister Madhavrao Scindia. Dutt's father
Sunil Dutt was a respected film star, social
worker and Congress minister.
With
elections approaching they are being deployed to
give the grand old party, a fresh, young look.
The process began in September last year
with Rahul being made a general secretary of the
party, in charge of its youth and students' wings.
A new cell named "Group to look into future
challenges" has been set up and includes several
members of the "youth brigade".
Close on
the heels of the generational shift in the party
has come the induction of Scindia and Prasada as
ministers.
Young MPs have become ministers
before. India's Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee
(72), for instance, was 38 when he first took
charge of a ministerial portfolio. There have been
others, even younger, who served as ministers. The
present government has a 31-year-old junior
minister and a 39-year-old cabinet minister (both
of them are MPs from parties that are allies of
the Congress in the ruling alliance).
But
this is hardly the norm.
Over half of
India's 1.1 billion-strong population is under 25
years of age, but those who lead the country, and
represent this young population in parliament and
state assemblies, are in their 60s and 70s.
The political scene in India is dominated
by men and women in their 60s and 70s. India's
President Pratibha Patil is 72 years old. The
previous four presidents, A P J Kalam, K R
Narayanan, S D Sharma and R Venkataraman, were
between 70 and 76 years old when they assumed
office.
At 75, Manmohan is among the
world's oldest leaders. His predecessor, Atal
Bihari Vajpayeem, was 80 when he left office in
2004. Morarji Desai became prime minister at the
age of 80 and continued until the age of 83.
Jawaharlal Nehru and Narasimha Rao occupied the
prime minister's seat until age 75, while Inder
Kumar Gujral was 78 when he became prime minister.
Not surprising then that politicians like
Rahul and Scindia, who are approaching middle age,
are regarded in India as young.
The
present government has 82 ministers of whom 46
(56%) are over 60 years of age. Minister for
Mines, Sis Ram Ola, is the oldest at 81, followed
by Minister for Minority Affairs Abdul Rehman
Antulay and Minister for Tribal Affairs Paty
Ripple Kyndiah at 79. Only four ministers are less
than 40 years of age, eight between 40 and 50
years and 22 between 50 and 60 years.
The
average age of Manmohan's council of ministers was
60.4 years prior to the recent expansion. The
average is now 59.5 years, which means that for
all the excitement over the "induction of young
guns" and fresh faces into the council of
ministers, its average age has been brought down
by a mere three-fourths of a year.
The
Congress is not the only party that is dominated
by people who are 60 plus. Its main rival, the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the left are even
grayer.
The BJP might be a young party -
it came into being in 1980 - but its prime
ministerial candidate for the 2009 elections is
the 80-year-old Lal Krishna Advani. "In India, we
love our grandpas," BJP spokesman Prakash
Jawadekar said when asked whether an 80-year-old
would be fit to lead the country. The BJP's
"Generation Next" politicians are in their middle
to late fifties. In the 2004 election it fielded
94-year-old Ramachandra Veerappa, from Bidar in
Karnataka. He won, but died a few months later.
As for the communists, it was only
recently that its "living legends", the
93-year-old Jyoti Basu and 92-year-old Harkishen
Singh Surjeet, relinquished full-fledged
membership in the politburo. Basu was 86 when he
stepped down as chief minister of the state of
West Bengal.
The formal elevation of
younger leaders in the Congress party organization
has undoubtedly infused a new energy into a party
that was slipping into a comatose state. Over the
past few months, it has been on a massive
recruitment drive, seeking to draw in youth from
across the country.
The generational shift
in the Congress is a good thing. The youth brigade
are said to have new ideas and energy. Rahul has
spoken of the need to democratize, end the
nomination culture and increase accountability in
the functioning of the party. Congressmen are
talking breathlessly about the "Brave New India"
that Rahul has set out to fashion.
A
"Brave New India" with young, energetic leaders at
the helm is no doubt inspiring and exciting. But
for some Indians a "Brave New India" cannot be led
by men and women who still believe in dynasties
and fiefdoms.
And this is where the youth
brigade is walking on very thin ice. However well
educated they might be, all of them are where they
are in the Congress today because of their
surnames. If they have managed to rise it is
because dynasty is more than anything else is
important in the Congress.
Whether or not
Rahul will become the Congress' prime ministerial
candidate for general elections in 2009 is not
clear. What is clear is that he will lead the
party campaign in the election, which means that
the campaign will see a 37-year-old Rahul pitted
against an 82-year-old Advani of the BJP.
Sudha
Ramachandran is an independent
journalist/researcher based in Bangalore.
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