The new Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has surprised everyone by defeating the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP),which is like the Congress Party of Japan. In the last sixty years,the LDP has been in power in all but two short spells. Hatoyama is the 51st prime minister of Japan. This is because even when it was firmly in power,the LDP had to distribute the top job among the heads of different factions. Each faction leader also had a dynasty and LDP was a multi-dynasty party. Hatoyama himself is the son and grandson of senior LDP politicians but he left the mother party and started his own party.
It seems to me that the problem in India today is not so much dynastic politics but that the Congress has only a single dynasty which can get the top job. This is why the Old Firms share of the PMs job amounts to 38 years while nine other PMs had to share the remaining 24 years. Even now,the many dynasties in the CongressScindia,Pilot,Deorahave to give up any ambition of being PM. The entire fuss about YSR and his son succeeding is not that it is a terrible idea (which it is) but that the Congress has no moral authority from Delhi to tell Andhra Pradesh what to do about succession. Rahul Gandhi has done a sensible thing in eschewing office and devoting himself to rebuilding the party which grandma had wrecked. But that is his choice. If the Andhra Assembly Congress members want to elect Jagan then why should the high command prevent it?
India is not so being Balkanised as it is being confederated. States like Tamil Nadu and Gujarat have their own political trajectory. YSR was his own boss. Narendra Modi may be disliked by many but Gujaratis vote for him in droves and he has once again shown that national trends are not enough to defeat him. West Bengal is also another state which is not just autonomous but its local politics are currently paralysing the UPA Cabinet since the Railways Minister is focussed on Writers Building and not Rail Bhavan.
Indias chance of having an efficient Delhi-Bombay freight corridor,to say nothing about a Japanese bullet type passenger train between the two cities which can make the journey in four hours,are remote since all that Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee cares about is Howrah.
The irony of all this is that in the discussions before Independence,the idea of a confederation with a weak centre and powerful provinces was rejected by the Congress. Jinnah wanted it to protect Muslim rights. So we had Partition and yet ended up with autonomous states. You could say India is reverting to its traditional pattern of many separate kingdoms over which occasionally one emperor asserted control but not for long. Yet,it is not threatening to Indias unity since the nation has matured. There is a binding Constitution and all states know they need to be in the Union for their own interests.
The only problem is that Congress high command still pretends it is like the old times. But that may be so in Delhi but not elsewhere. We will have many powerful states where succession will be dynastic or not depending on local politics. The local party may be even called the Congress but it will be its own boss. We may yet have many dynasties one at the centre and many more in the states within the Congress.
A new Confederate India is emerging regardless of the arithmetic in Lok Sabha. Yet,few are willing to acknowledge its arrival. It will require new rules and conventions by which politics can be played consensually. It will be a bumpy bouncy ride. Enjoy it. Do not fear it.
