Experience & Youth, Merit or Bequest?

by Maneck Davar

The repeated criticism of the BJP is that it lacks young leadership, with the obvious subtext being that the Congress has many young leaders led by a person who bears the most famous surname in Indian political history.

I have a particular issue with this. I ask myself, would I be more comfortable with the reins of government being in the hands of those who are there because they have been fortunate in a genetic lottery or those who have risen through the ranks purely and solely on merit, talent and ability and on the basis of hard work. To any sane man this questions need no answer.

My friends tell me that I am too fond of history, but I feel a sense of history is the only way to have a keener and clearer perspective. The Bhartiya Jan Sangh, the precursor of the BJP, was established as a cadre based party by the late Shyama Prasad Mukherjee. By its very definition, there is a hierarchy, which commences at the ward/punchayat level and which one must climb to reach to the top. The only way to do this is through consistent effort and sacrifice. Both Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani spent most of their lives in propagating party ideology and creating an infrastructure nationwide living out of party offices on paltry monthly allowances. Almost all the top leadership of the BJP spent months in jail during the Emergency. There is no one today in the top rung who is there because of a surname. This is not unique to the BJP, but also to the cadre based Communists. In politics, your ability should count the most, and pedigree very little.

It is also unfortunate that more than six decades after Independence both from the British and the Maharajas we still exhibit a feudal mentality. The only difference, in those days Maharajas handed down their kingdoms from one generation to another, these days fathers create political jagirs and all the assets that go with it to be bequeathed to their progeny. The tragedy is that today in the Congress, almost with little exception, the entire young brigade is there because of where they were born and not for what they have achieved.

As for Mr. Advani’s age, he is but a few years older then the present Prime Minister. He has held many political and administrative posts from the Minister of Information & Broadcasting in 1977 in the Janata Government, to the Home Minister and Deputy Prime Minister and his record is blemish-free. The BJP has enough bench strength to provide a Cabinet of performers. The BJP is not untried and untested; its record in government for six years, with Mr. Vajpayee as the only non-Congress Prime Minister to last a full term, was creditable and did not propel the country back to the dark ages. Most important, the BJP is, in its own way, a meritocracy and does not have the pack-of-cards foundations of an individual-centric sycophancy, which by its very nature ensures predetermined concentration of power, precluding any other person, no matter how competent, from even aspiring for the top post.

Finally Mr. Lal Krishna Advani’s daughter, Pratibha is not even a primary member of the party. That is the way it should be in a democracy.

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