Vote of Confidence:Profiles of Young Politicians

By Aashti Bhartia

Aashti Bhartia is a story-teller who stumbled upon political writing. She was educated at Columbia University in History and Anthropology. Her thesis on chaotic deportations in post-9/11 America, Reading Kafka in an Immigration Court: The Trial of Sulaiman Oladokun, was published by the Duke University Press. She has previously written for the Indian Express and Elle magazine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roli Books
• Release date: Oct 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9789351940418

Book preview

Introduction

I had written a long piece on Amar Singh in August 2009 and put it up on a blog. Amar Singh was very sick at that time. The General Elections had finished a few months earlier and the Samajwadi Party (SP) had fallen in Uttar Pradesh to twenty-three seats, from thirty-five in 2004. Amar Singh was brooding over the results. His hatred for Azam Khan and his fondness for Jaya Prada misguided him, he admitted. ‘It became an ego fight.’ Singh spent the election making sure Azam Khan, his own SP candidate, lost. He also lost sight of the larger election, Singh said in regret, and seven or eight other seats, which the Samajwadi Party could have won, suffered.

It was a rare admission for a politician to make. At the time, Singh’s house looked empty but he hadn’t been ousted from the SP as yet.

During the interview, Amar Singh said, the Congress had used him like a ‘contraceptive’ in the Nuclear Deal and flushed him out after a ‘political ejaculation.’ Later, in a reflective mood, he spoke of his feelings of inferiority while growing up and his relationship with his father. When Singh wanted to go to St. Xavier’s College, his father mocked him. When he joined a political party, his father threw him out of the house.

Singh talked about how the idea of proving wrong his arch enemy – his father – drove him for years. He always needed a ‘powerful enemy’, ‘a major crisis’, and personal enmity to motivate him, Singh told me, voluntarily revealing his psychological underpinnings, his strongest driver and his greatest weakness.

Singh was so eager to talk that when his wife, Pankaja, interrupted to take him to the hospital, Singh told her to hold on; he wanted to finish the interview first. Later, she insisted and he told me to come with them. I sat beside him, my voice recorder still running in the car all the way to the hospital.

It was after reading this piece on Amar Singh, written after one interview, that Priya Kapoor, my publisher at Roli, called and asked me to write a book on younger politicians.

Profiles of Members of Parliament (MPs) under the age of forty – that was my broad brief. The ‘Young MP’ theme rang a bit clichéd at first. However, I was intrigued by the idea of poking around Ministries, figuring out what the young politicians are up to, and clearing the cobwebs of party politics. I realized also that despite all the glossy press on ‘Young MPs’, most people didn’t know much about them. How did each of them go about elections, what were they doing in their ministries, what were they up to, in general, what did being an MP involve? I was curious to know.

The interview with Amar Singh had been easy and I foolishly assumed that all the profiles would be that simple. The thing about Singh is if you go to him for a story, he hands it to you on a platter – political scandal and dark psychological insight, all together.

The younger politicians are much harder to get talking. Many of the lesser known, first time MPs, were hesitant – they aren’t used to telling stories about themselves and are uncertain what to reveal. The young two-term MPs, often second generation politicians, have been interviewed too many times and are weary of journalists. They drop rehearsed sound bytes.

Over time, as I met MPs, I learned how to steer conversations and get a sense of what interested them. I learned to pick arguments, to bring up touchy subjects again and again, to push them to speak their minds and to talk about things they cared about. As I met the MPs for the second time, traveled to their constituencies with them, dug around them, or talked to people close to them, each of their stories developed interesting contours.

There is no job description for an MP or a Minister; each of them go about their work as they choose. I came to realize how different each of their visions are, how different and particular their strengths and respective ways of thinking about their responsibility.

Even senior journalists I spoke to admitted not knowing much about the younger politicians. In articles, the second generation politicians in particular are often summed up in one sentence or spoken of sweepingly as if they’re all the same.

However, each of them has specific strengths. I found Jyotiraditya Scindia a dedicated and capable manager, something India’s Ministries desperately need. I came to find Sachin Pilot a thoughtful, level-headed speaker, clear and comfortable talking about caste politics and other prickly subjects. Pilot could, in future, make a good spokesperson and public face for the Congress.

Even if they have opinions on the better known faces, most journalist friends I spoke with didn’t have much to say about the first time MPs, the ones without any family connections. No one knew of Meeanakshi Natarajan’s amazing ground-level sloganeering in student politics. No one I met had heard of how Ghanshyam Anuragi became a local legend in central Uttar Pradesh, before he turned politician.

These are the young people India has elected to power. They will, in the years to come, be running the country.

Akhilesh Yadav’s recent success in UP and the clamor for him to become Chief Minister proves that voters place a premium on youth – perhaps they're tired of the jaded faces they've been seeing, perhaps they feel young politicians, with their careers still ahead of them, would be more eager to prove themselves in office, or because they feel younger politicians would be more in tune with their needs. Whatever the reason, we're seeing a changing of guard.

To answer the question ‘Why Young MPs?’ in summary, I thought it would be good to know what each of their visions are, if any, their particular strength, their style, and their story. I thought it would be interesting to watch, in the years to come, how they execute that vision, how they build on those strengths, whether they lose track, and how they change when greater power comes to them.

***

In mid-2011, while I was writing this book, the Anna Hazare Anti-Corruption protests broke. Ironically, as the country’s mood turned anti-politician, I found myself writing profiles of young politicians.

I am thankful to Anna Hazare, whatever the issues with the Lokpal Bill (Should the CBI be under it? Should the states?). The Bill is bringing government reform and systemic reform to the forefront of national debate. The first step had been the Right to Information Act, but after that, nothing. With scandal after scandal breaking, there was a profound sense of apathy building up in the country. But governance reform was not something we were in the habit of discussing.

The Anna Hazare movement, which started as anti-corruption, also took another swing and became broadly anti-politician. However, it’s crazy to think that, all things remaining the same, if we were to do away with the current set of politicians, we would, from somewhere, get a better (incorruptible) set of leaders.

Most people are corruptible. Corruption is not just a political, or even a public sector problem. In the private sector too, in construction, in factories, at media houses, everywhere, corruption is rife; everybody’s making a ‘cut’. However, the scale of corruption in private companies is, perhaps, more controlled. Private companies need to report results and there are checks and consequences for corruption.

So it’s not that corruption is only found amongst politicians; what’s missing in political and public life is a sense of accountability, a feeling that there are consequences for corruption and ineffectiveness. As Ajay Kumar, the newly elected MP from Jamshedpur said about his work in the police in Bihar, ‘you can’t hope to raise people’s morality, you can only monitor them’ and make sure it’s harder to do something wrong.

Politics is the only job I’ve seen so far where you’re not answerable to anyone for five years. For a Member of Parliament from a constituency, voters decide and we can’t have elections every year. But it’s odd that even ministers (of Education, Health, Agriculture, Aviation, or Oil & Gas) who control a huge chunk of the country’s resources, aren’t hauled up on performance. Until a massive scandal erupts, or some major oversight is uncovered, everyone stays on.

Even the Lokpal Bill isn’t enough, as Kumar mused, we need wider systemic reform. We need a set of performance indicators for each Ministry. We need Ministers to report regularly, publicly, on performance and important decisions. And we need the Prime Minister, or whoever’s in charge, to change a Minister if his or her Ministry’s performance falls.

Even for Members of Parliament, as Deepender Hooda suggested, we need to report better statistics – statistics on jobs created, school drop-out ratios, teacher absenteeism, agricultural productivity, infrastructure improvements (and more) for each constituency year on year. So voters can figure out: What did our MP do or not do? What areas did he or she focus on?

The Anna Hazare and anti-corruption movement also became anti-Congress.

On the Congress, I’ll say, despite his defeats, I think Rahul Gandhi has had an interesting approach. He’s focused on the Youth Congress, given opportunities to some very interesting people (Meenakshi Natarajan, Ashok Tanwar, Manick Tagore, and others). He’s taken the onus of driving the Congress in UP. These are novel, fairly courageous steps – however they panned out.

What does stand out as odd about the Congress is that everyone else in the party stays so low-key, you’re hard up to figure out who they really are and what they believe in. At the national level, in the Congress, it seems, a culture of projecting only the Gandhi family has seeped in.

Meenakshi Natarajan, who’d made a big stir in student politics, hasn’t led any movements for the party. In 2011, she should have been on the streets, explaining the Congress stand on the Lokpal Bill, championing slogans. I wish Pilot, Scindia, Hooda, Tanwar, and others made more noise too. I wish they spoke out loudly on national issues, talked about what they’re passionate about, argued their opinions.

The Congress doesn’t project itself as a constellation of strong leaders – in the states or at the center.

If the 2012 state elections in UP and Punjab show one thing, they show that people want to elect local champions who can be held accountable, not far-away mega-stars. The Congress, it seems, needs to rethink its big-banner branding to project strong, local politicians in every state, each backed by the larger Congress brand.

More immediately, in the 2014 General Election, I think the Congress should move on from a soft, family brand and bring to the front its many capable faces. It should pitch Natarajan, Pilot, Scindia, Hooda, and Tanwar as a new committed, intelligent (not to mention youthful) team behind Rahul.

Perhaps, it should give each of them a mandate (education, health, or unemployment) and project a diversely informed team. Most importantly, it should give each of them the space to speak, to be known.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a cacophony though it can be, at least gives the impression of having independent thinkers – the BJP ally Nitish Kumar, the staunch Narendra Modi, the opinionated lawyer Arun Jaitley, the savvy Sushma Swaraj. They are always making themselves heard, constantly letting it be known who they are. Now, Anurag Thakur, Varun Gandhi, Janardhana Swamy – the younger BJP lot – are doing the same.

A culture of deference doesn’t make for strong, credible leaders. Independent thinking, vocal, visible people do. Even if you disagree with them, at least you know what they stand for.

***

I chose some of the sixteen MPs profiled here because they’re written about in the press all the time, but not much is known about them. I’ve written about some because they are young Ministers of State and I wanted to know about their work in the Ministries. I’ve written about others for the opposite reason – very little is known about their unusual journeys to Parliament.

The process was also somewhat random: I’ve written about whoever I read or heard something interesting about, whoever I managed to get an introduction to, whoever was able to give me enough time, or whoever picked up my phone calls when I called their number – which I’d gotten off the Lok Sabha website.

I ended up with nine MPs from the ruling party, the Congress, and seven from other parties: two from the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), two from the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), one from the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha (JVM), one from the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), and one from the Samajwadi Party (SP). Three of the MPs I’ve written about fought from reserved (dalit) seats. I ended up including (unfortunately) only one woman. The piece on Akhilesh Yadav, who’s now no longer an MP but Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, is a bonus addition to the collection. It chronicles his work in turning around a deflated party while he was still a relatively unknown MP.

I did interview some other MPs, including other young women MPs, but, in the end, couldn’t include them here because they couldn’t give me enough time, or because they didn’t want to speak to me on certain subjects, which left the profiles incomplete.

Nine of the sixteen MPs I’ve written about are hereditary politicians; their fathers have been in important political positions. Patrick French wrote about the growing phenomena of family politics in India in his 2011 book, India, A Portrait. His chapter on hereditary politics made it to the cover of Outlook magazine. About fifty per cent of all Indian MPs under the age of fifty, French showed, are hereditary MPs and about sixty-six per cent of MPs younger than forty are hereditary MPs (or ‘HMPs’ as French calls them).

In my selection, too, fifty-six per cent are hereditary politicians, six of them from the Congress and another three from other parties. However, in writing about the hereditary politicians, I’ve tried to tell their story, discover what they’re doing. I’ve written about their fathers’ influences, but didn’t judge them for who their fathers were.

I did also make sure I met MPs who didn’t come from political families: I ran after Meenakshi Natarajan, the only non-hereditary MP among women MPs under forty in the Congress. I made sure I met Janardhana Swamy and Ashok Tanwar. I read about Ghanshyam Anuragi in a newspaper; he, luckily, picked up my phone the first time I called. Very last minute, I also decided to include Ajoy Kumar – though he’s forty-nine and not as young as the others – because his story is so incredible.

Before I finish, I’d quickly like to thank everyone who helped me in this book: my publisher Priya Kapoor and editor Selina Sheth, for edging me on through the long haul. All the MPs who spoke with me, and gave me access to the people around them. The families and associates of the young MPs who agreed to meet with me. Arun Jaitley and Shobhana Bhartia for their support and for helping me get in touch with MPs I may not have met otherwise. Eisha Chopra for her meticulous design. I’d especially like to thank Vir Sanghvi for his encouragement and for sharing his own stories with me, Shekhar Gupta, and his buoyant edit team, for their time and advice, and Aditi Phadnis for her impromptu, thoroughly engrossing, lessons on political history, and finally, Tarun Tejpal for his attention.

In this past year, when democratic politics in India has gotten such a dressing down, I hope these stories present a glimmer of the possibilities Indian democracy offers – despite everything that’s wrong with it.

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The Man Who Became

Chief Minister

The Samajwadi Party results in the 2012 UP assembly elections were a complete turnaround from 2009 when the party looked

like it would slowly fade away. The 2012 results were not a windfall, however. They were the result of an incredibly well-honed campaign by a thirty-eight-year-old party president.

AKHILESH YADAV

Samajwadi Party

Born on 1 July 1973

27 years of age at first election

Formerly MP from Kannauj, Uttar Pradesh

Currently Chief Minister, Uttar Pradesh,

from 15 March 2012

There’s a feeling of jubilation, and of suspense on Vikramaditya Marg in Lucknow, where the Samajwadi Party (SP) office and also Mulayam Singh Yadav’s home are, a short distance from each other.

After a six month yatra through Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam Singh’s son Akhilesh Yadav has, at the age of thirty-eight, become the youngest Chief Minister (CM) India has today.

Along Vikramaditya Marg, there are booths selling red SP flags and life-size cut-outs of Akhilesh. In the party office, there are endless clusters of people waiting to congratulate and to bring their problems to the new CM.

On television, there is already critical speculation about why Akhilesh has chosen his father’s old associates as ministers; why a man with more than forty murder cases pending against him has been chosen as Prisons Minister. There are reports that SP workers are roughing up people; that the unemployment allowance the SP promised pre-election is now being shoddily implemented. One week in, the sweet celebration period hasn’t yet ended, but an intense scrutiny of the new Chief Minister has begun.

However, this is not the story of what is to come. It’s too early to tell how the Akhilesh Yadav government will pan out. This is the story of how the thirty-eight year-old became Chief Minister of the most populous and politically crucial state in India. After its sorry performance in the 2007 Uttar Pradesh (UP) state elections and the 2009 general elections, the Samajwadi Party seemed as if it would fall of the map. Everyone had written it off. The Hindi edition of Tehelka did a story after the 2009 elections, ‘Ek thi Samajwadi Party (once there was a Samajwadi Party).’ But then, in the 2012 state assembly elections, the SP won 224 out of 403 seats, a neat majority. This is how they did it.

Akhilesh Yadav, Samajwadi Party’s founder and national head Mulayam Singh’s son, took out a six-month long ‘Kranti Rath Yatra’ that travelled widely around UP. But, his was not the only yatra at large in the state. Yatras, a kind of crusade, a march or a tour, building up a specific issue or a set of issues before elections, have become common strategy in Indian politics. Every major party had a yatra out for the UP state elections.

L.K. Advani, that old yatra veteran, was on the road again with a ‘Jan Chetna Yatra’. His was pegged as an ‘anti-corruption yatra’, but it suffered from the overhang of Advani’s earlier communal Ram Janmabhoomi yatra in 1990. A sallow, 84-year-old Advani set out in a bus in October 2011 to talk about ‘the ills that have weakened the nation.’