Family feuds

A father advising his son not to contest elections is unusual in Indian politics. Rarer still is such a piece of advice emanating from a veteran politician dad, albeit one miffed with his party, to a son who is a bred-in-the-bone five-time MLA. Dynastic politics holds sway in the country as a web of powerful relatives canvasses to maximise their influence to gain power, unlike in most democracies of the developed world. The kin of local and regional satraps — sons, daughters, brothers, spouses or children-in-law — dot the political landscape. Wielding varying degrees of power in the constituencies nurtured by the family patriarchs or matriarchs, they make for an interesting set walking the tightrope. The motley crowd includes ambitious power-hungry people juxtaposed with reluctant entrants to the arena. Giving wind to this flourishing practice are most political parties as they converge on the neta-ka-beta in the name of ‘winnability’. The tall intentions of giving one ticket in one family and putting their rivals in the dock for promoting dynasts are good for rhetoric.

The cut-throat competitive electoral world also begets fights for a bigger share in the family’s political pie, giving rise to internal strife. The clamour for power among clan members escalates during the poll season, putting their power-brokering skills to test. People watch their shenanigans with amusement-ridden bated breath. At times, the feuding members soon comprise and call it a truce. Like Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav did before the last UP Assembly elections. On other occasions, the rift deepens into a split in the party. This was seen in Haryana recently on the eve of the Jind bypoll when the Chautala family’s Dushyant faction severed ties with the four-generation-old INLD to form a new party, the Jannayak Janata Party.

Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa’s veiled threat to not canvass for son Parminder Singh Dhindsa wrapped in his suggestion against Junior entering the poll fray this time in Punjab is another instance of a war in a parivar. This move in the poll dance has the political pundits and voters hooked.