ANTI-DYNASTICISM has been one of the recurrent tropes used by the BJP against its adversaries, in this campaign as well as in previous elections. In a rally speech held in Nagaur, Rajasthan, ahead of the December 2018 state elections, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared: ‘We are not seeking votes for our grandsons or granddaughters but for your welfare and to help fulfil your dreams.’¹ The following (general) election he stated, would oppose kaamdar (doers) to naamdar (dynasts), a slogan that would stick and permeate deep into public discourse in India.

Six months after that speech, the prime minister and the BJP claimed that they were vindicated by the results of the 2019 general elections, in which many prominent dynastic candidates from the Congress Party bit the dust. Rahul Gandhi, first among them, lost the family stronghold of Amethi to Smriti Irani. In Madhya Pradesh, Jyotiraditya Scindia lost his four-time held seat of Guna by a large margin against a newcomer, an ex-Congress party worker. Milind Deora, son of the late Murli Deora, a veteran Congressman, lost in Mumbai South. In Jodhpur, Rajasthan, Vaibhav Gehlot, son of the serving Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, was defeated.

Other prominent defeated dynasts include Nikhil Kumaraswamy, son of Karnataka Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy; Manvendra Singh, son of former Union Minister Jaswant Singh; Parth Pawar, son of Ajit Pawar and grandson of NCP chief Sharad Pawar; Aashray Sharma, son of former Himachal Pradesh Power Minister Anil Sharma; Sushmita Dev, daughter of former Union Minister Santosh Mohan Dev and Bhupinder Singh Hooda, former Chief Minister and head of a prominent political family in Haryana. Of the 114 Congress candidates belonging to a political family, only 23 won or retained their seats, including Rahul Gandhi, defeated in Amethi but victorious in Wayanad, Kerala.

Commenting on the latter’s defeat the day after the results, Ram Madhav, General Secretary of the BJP, declared that ‘…gone are the days of doing politics in the name of your father and grandfather.’² Placing anti-dynasticism at the heart of its electoral strategy was not merely an instrument to critique the Congress or other regional parties. It was meant to place the BJP on the positive side of simple binaries opposing hard work to inheritance, merit to entitlement, and inclusion to privilege. It helped the BJP to build and maintain for itself an image of a perpetual outsider to mainstream politics, a domain dominated by an anglophone elite portrayed as cosmopolitan and disconnected from everyday life realities. The question addressed here is to see whether reality supports this view and to find out whether the rise of the BJP has led or not to an erosion of the dynastic phenomenon.

In her 2016 edited volume on the subject, Kanchan Chandra found that ‘… a quarter of Indian parliamentarians were dynastic, on average, between 2004 and 2014…’³ Data collected by the Trivedi Centre for Political Data at Ashoka University indicates that the numbers for 2019 are consistent with those findings. Of 542 MPs, 140 belong to political families, if one includes only MPs closely related to existing or former MPs, MLAs or elected officials at other levels of representation.⁴ The definition thus includes vertical dynasties (sons, daughters and grandchildren of politicians) and horizontal family ties (brothers, sisters, in-laws, uncles and aunts and so forth).

 

Our definition of a member of a political family includes any Lok Sabha MP with a relative who, in the past or in the present, has served or serves an elective mandate, or has been nominated to the Vidhan Sabha, Vidhan Parishad, Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha, or who has occupied or continues to occupy prominent positions in a party. The definition excludes members of royal families when no other member of the said family ever held public office. Out of 2089 main party candidates, we found that 328 belonged to political families. 43% of these dynastic candidates were elected, against 23% of the non-dynastic candidates.

A state-wise comparison reveals that the phenomenon of dynasticism remains widespread: Among the large states (10 Lok Sabha seats or more), those where the proportion of dynasts stands above the national average are, in the increasing direction, Rajasthan (20%), Madhya Pradesh (21%), Orissa (29%), Jharkhand (29%), Haryana (30%), Bihar (32.5%), Tamil Nadu (34%), Telangana (35.3%), Karnataka (35.7%), Maharashtra (37.5%) and Punjab (61.5%). The states of Gujarat, West Bengal, Assam and Kerala, are among the least dynastic, with an average of 13% of dynastic candidates.

 

Dynasticism affects most parties, although to varied levels. One would assume that regional parties, which tend to function as private family holdings, would be more dynastic. That is actually not the case. National parties are at the forefront of the phenomenon, across all states. Overall, 22.2% of both Congress and BJP’s candidates belong to political families, against 10.4% of all state based parties’ candidates.

The gap is striking in Bihar (46% of dynasts among the candidates of the national parties against 11% among those of the state parties), in Haryana (45% against 2.5%), in Karnataka (29.2% against 13.5%), in Madhya Pradesh (24% against 1%), in Maharashtra (31% against 17.3%), in Odisha (20.5% against 11.5%), in Telangana (32.4% against 19%) and even in Uttar Pradesh (22% against 16.5%).

If one looks at individual parties, some regional parties stand largely above the average: JD(S) (66.6%), SAD (50%), DMK (39.1%), RJD (33%), TDP (32%), NCP (29.4%), TRS (29.4%), BJD and SP (28.6%). Most of these parties are led by political families, often large ones, as the case of the SP. The smaller the party, the most dynastic. All three RLD candidates in Uttar Pradesh belong to political families, five of the six LJP candidates, six of the nine JD(S) candidates. The only parties which do not indulge in dynasticism are the CPI and the CPI(M), where less than 3% of the candidates belonged to political families.

Between the two national parties, the Congress remains the most dynastic, with 27.4% of its candidates belonging to a political family. The BJP is 10% behind, with 17.2% of dynastic candidates. Sixty of the 75 BJP dynastic candidates won their election, against 23 out of 115 for the Congress, which is reflective of both parties’ performance in these elections.

 

The more prominent BJP dynast winners include Kiren Rijiju (Arunachal Pradesh), son of a former MLA and pro-tem speaker of the Arunachal Assembly; Anurag Thakur, son of a three-time MP from Hamirpur and former Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister; Poonam Mahajan, daughter of the late Pramod Mahajan, MP; Varun and Maneka Gandhi, grandson and daughter-in-law of Indira Gandhi (and son and widow of Sanjay Gandhi); Pritam Munde, daughter of the late Gopinath Munde, former Union Minister: Heena Vijaykumar Gavit, daughter of a former Minister; Sunny Deol, son of movie star and former MP Dharmendra; Rita Bahuguna Joshi, daughter and sister of former Chief Ministers; Mala Rajya Laxmi Shah, daughter-in-law of an 8-time MP in Uttarakhand; and Jayant Sinha, son of former Union Minister Yashwant Sinha.

The list goes on and may seem counter-intuitive given the BJP’s posture vis-à-vis dynasticism. It also counters the view that the BJP has a more meritocratic, or performance based, approach to candidate selection. 22% of re-running BJP incumbents belong to political families. Given the level of performance of BJP candidates opposed to Congress candidates, it does not make much statistical sense to compare the vote share performance or victory margins of dynastic candidates against non-dynastic candidates. One can assume that the party effect in this election was very strong. But the fact that 44% of all Congress MPs (23 out of 52) and 20% of all BJP MPs (60/303) belong to political families indicates that it remains an advantage.

 

The main reason for the resilience of dynasticism is that parties aim to maximize their chances at winning seats by fielding candidates that tick most of the winnability boxes. In many constituencies, being a dynast remains an advantage rather than a liability. Dynastic politicians have name recognition, local status, a history of access to resources and local authorities. Dynasts who belong to local traditional elites or local aristocratic families can still derive influence from the status and prestige attached to their name. The data in Table 1 shows that the ratio of dynastic MPs party-wise tend to be higher than among the candidates. Among major parties, 26.3% of MPs belong to political families, against 15.8% of their candidates.

More importantly, belonging to a political family remains a strong criterion of selectability for political parties. Political parties are risk-averse organizations that often confuse winnability for selectability. They (and they are not alone) often assume that what they think are the attributes of a strong candidate correspond exactly to what voters want. The resilience of dynasts in politics is reflective of the persistence of parties’ selection biases.

The prevalence of dynasticism among women candidates stands out even more clearly when one considers the gender dimension of dynasticism. Most parties recruit few women candidates and tend to select most of them from established political families, as they still perceive that fielding women candidates constitutes a risk.

Thirty per cent of all dynastic main party candidates are women, against 8% of all non-dynastic candidates. Here again, the smaller the party, the higher the percentage of women dynastic candidates. 100% of the female candidates fielded by the SP, the NCP, the TDP, the DMK and the TRS belong to political families. The three women candidates fielded by the RJD are all wives of jailed party leaders (including Lalu Prasad Yadav). In smaller parties, women candidates are more likely to be a direct relative of the party leader: Kanimozhi, daughter of Karunanidhi; Dimple Yadav, wife of Akhilesh Yadav; Supriya Sule, daughter of Sharad Pawar; Kalvakunthla Kavitha, daughter of KCR, and so forth.

This trend applies to the Congress and BJP as well, with respectively 51% and 47.2% of their women candidates being dynasts. Even the Trinamool Congress, which has given tickets to a record number of women and which is overall one of the less dynastic parties of India, tends to ‘play it safe’ by nominating a large fraction of women belonging to political families (30.4%). These statistics should not be read as an indictment of women candidates but rather as an indicator of the biases parties apply when they select candidates.

 

So why bother about dynasticism? A frequent objection to these observations is that party leadership is what truly matters, and that candidates and MPs are incidental at best, if not marginal, to the story of these elections. What is important is that parties led by dynasts fell while the party led by a leader without immediate familial attachments won. There is value to this argument, and it may well be that the delegitimization of dynasticism worked at the general level, as part of a national political narrative. But it does not mean that dynasticism ceases to matter at the local level. The data suggests that the phenomenon remains prevalent, despite the consolidation of the BJP’s performance, and that the BJP itself is not immune to dynasticism. But unless one completely discards the importance of political representation, one cannot ignore the general and local implications of the resilience of political families.

 

First, parties’ selection biases have the effect of narrowing down the access to eligible positions to non-dynasts – and by extension to non-elite candidates. It is so much harder for anyone aspiring to become a representative to get a chance to run on a strong ticket, if they do not belong to a political family. Second, these numbers may or may not seem substantial, but they go along a broader array of evidence that suggests that political recruitment in India is increasingly elitist. There is the funding dimension, with a spiralling cost of entry that bars access to most aspirant politicians.⁵ Political parties are incentivized to recruit their candidates among local elites, both caste wise but also in economic terms.⁶

Despite the prevalence of a discourse of inclusion, parties aim to recruit candidates among groups that are locally dominant. As a result, upper castes and various intermediary castes, such as Patidars, Jats, Marathas, Vokkaligas and Lingayats, Kammas and Reddys, remain largely over-represented in the Lok Sabha. In the Hindi belt, upper castes made 30% of all major parties’ candidates and 40% of all MPs. The BJP distributed nearly half of its tickets to upper caste candidates and got most of them elected. Overall, the combined representation of upper castes and intermediary castes in the Lok Sabha is at 43.8% of the seats, against 23% of the seats to OBC MPs. Upper castes and intermediary castes in fact make the majority of all MPs, if one excludes MPs from reserved seats, for the sake of argument. Accross the Hindi Belt, the representation of upper castes has gone back to pre-Mandal levels.

This skewed selection of candidates has adverse effects on the representation of Muslims, who made barely 8% of all major parties’ candidates and 5% of all MPs. The inequality is much starker for women, who hardly stand a chance of getting a nomination, particularly if they do not belong to a political family.

 

The focus on national factors and on party leadership has the effect of obfuscating the elements, nuances and contradictions that shape electoral politics in India. Despite the prevalent rhetoric, there is no evidence that voters reject dynasticism per se, particularly when party appeal is so strong, as a result of the presidentialization of general elections. Congress dynasts bit the dust because their party’s leadership and national campaign were no match for the BJP. Historically, one-party dominance has been associated with the over-representation of traditional elites. Actual social rainbow coalitions are very hard to build and even harder to maintain. As the BJP consolidates its presence and dominance across states, it contributes to create a new political elite, a new establishment in which dynasts can find their place.

 

Footnotes:

1. India Today, 28 November 2018.

2. Business Standard, 24 May 2019.

3. Kanchan Chandra, Democratic Dynasties: State, Party and Family in Contemporary Indian Politics. Cambridge University Press, 2016, p. 49.

4. These numbers are based on an online screening of all main party candidates, mining both English and vernacular sources. It is plausible that the actual numbers may be under-estimated as they are contingent on the existence of online sources. The data was collected and formatted by Sofia Ammassari, with support from the TCPD team. Some of these numbers have been previously released close to the date of the results (see: https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/experts-explain-why-so-many-mps-are-dynasts-lok-sabha-election-bjp-congress-rahul-gandhi-5749570) and have since been revised after further data cleaning and the exclusion of candidates with relatives who ran for office but did not win. Percentage variations may appear important as the numbers of candidates and MPs per state and by party are small.

5. D. Kapur and M. Vaishnav, Costs of Democracy: Political Finance in India. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2018.

6. G. Verniers, ‘The Transformation of Backward Class Politics in Uttar Pradesh’, Economic and Political Weekly 53(33), 18 August 2018, pp. 68-73.