Look! That's what you call a Family Tree!!

Ganesh Chaturthi invites a huge political activity all around the town I live in. In school days, we used to have 'Classroom Decorating Competitions', where each class would decorate their room and the best one would win! We all were one as a school but some amount of rivalry surely crept in due to these competitions. Then, once decorated, teachers would come and inspect. We used to leave no way so as to disappoint the inspector. The perfectly-answering-students were placed on the very first row, but we were very clever! We knew the inspector would choose a last-bencher! So some of the former were placed at the back too! The inspection time was full of nervousness, of how everyone would react. But then it would go in a swoosh! Then the results would come, the most awaited ones. The environment reminded me all this. Every party was in its full swing to impress the inspector, correcting my words, inspectors, the people.

Huge replicas of historic and religious sites were being made all over the place. Each party has its own area (notice the word; if you remember any such South Indian Film dialogue). This area is the place it lays its glory and richness for the people to watch, here is where the true Lakshmi rests. Well what caught my attention this time were the posters! I loved the variation they used to bring in the poses of the white-dressed(be sarcastic) people in them. The young men actually enjoyed clicking themselves, one could easily notice their make-up. I was watchig them one by one when I heared a lady telling her child something that made me laugh at first, but then it hit me. The lady was pointing out at one of the posters, it had three men and a woman, all four just the faces. The lady said,

'Look beta, that's what you call a family tree! The first one's the head, the father. He is the bread-earner of the family. You see that young bhaiyya? That's his son. And that one too, whose beside him. So understood? Father, sons and then grandsons and granddaughters!'

I saw the boy smile, so easily he had understood all this! Father, son and grandsons! Oh that was a piece of joke for me! Or wasn't it?

I had already started thinking, why it was so that whichever party I thought of, I could find many examples of 'family trees'! I even was thinking whether that lady was the mom! Yea, it's natural right? You see father and sons and a lady, you expect her to be the mother. But now that thought was gradually moving as a much larger one was trying an entry..How come so many parties have a leader with his family members also on high posts in the party?

I could go on if I start naming such leaders. For instance, the Gandhi family in Congress, the Thakres in Shivsena, the Yadavs of SP, Lalu Prasad of RJD, and many more at the local level. We have so much of Dynastic Politics going on in India, that even Mr. Javed Ansari, a senior political analyst says that is has become natural to have it in India. It has been growing up very successfully and none has ever strongly spoken on it. We could see examples of Rabdi Devi, of how she ruined politics in Bihar. Presently Akhilesh Yaday in UP, he had claimed that crime rates would come down within six months after he comes to power, nothing happened. It has become a fashion, most apt to be called, for the sons of the party leaders to be called as the youth icons! Rahul in Congres, Aditya in Shivsena, Akhilesh in SP and many more! We seriously have come so far in this issue, that now none notices how wrong these parties are doing right at their fundamentals, choosing the right leader.

Civics in class9 and 10 thoroughly discussed on the challenges democracy faces today, one of them was Dynastic Politics. Its explanation was what I loved the most. It said,

Today dynastic politics has spread in almost all the parties in India. It drills the basics of democracy. What a true democracy aims at is its practice at every level, e.g. at your home, your father takes a meeting to decide whether or not to sell off your car. You discuss and give your opinions, and if you don't agree, he considers your side. That's what is democracy at the most basic level, home. Now political parties being the most basic element of the process of forming government in a democracy, they themselves should have a democratic structure. Every member of the party should have an equal say in the party's decision. But we have failed to do so in India.
(see page 83 Challenges to Politics Class 10-
http://www.ncert.nic.in/NCERTS/textbook/textbook.htm?jess4=6-8)

Surely, what the book says is true. The basic elements of the democracy should themselves be democratic! This misguided politics, now has turned into a type of monarchy at lower levels. Each party head enjoys the powers equal to a king(you have a very recent example). Every son(notice the gender discrimination; no daughter is ever seen as a youth icon) is a prince! What we have lost in this, is talent and our country's good. There are several such young minds who wish to join politics, but stand in a dilemma while choosing a party. They know, wherever they go, their ideas and concepts would be dumped off against the party's conventional ideologies. Dynastic politics can only be stopped by bringing up better new parties or cleaning this mess of numerous parties, limiting them to a finite number.

Friends speak out against dynastic politics instead of happily accepting what Rahul Gandhi says. The very existence of such people is invalid! Think on it friends, did Rahul or Aditya ever came up on their own? Did the members of the party collectively appointed him? Or even Mr. Uddhav earlier?! Where would have they been, if they weren't born in those families? Politics in India has become a part time or a full time job substitute if you fail to pass in other fields. There are leaders who are just 8th passed. I respect what our constitution says, that formal education is not necessary for a person to think good for the country. But their are just handful of such people. Others are just pouncing over the opportunity! It might appear that it makes no good in speaking against this, but folks we're losing Great Leaders, ones who can set better examples than 'family trees'.