GenNext in Indian politics

The Contenders: Who Will Lead India Tomorrow?

Priya Sahgal

Simon and Schuster

Rs 399, 243 pages

In her new book, Priya Sahgal, a veteran journalist who has written on politics for Outlook and India Today, focuses on the GenNext of Indian politics, whom she believes is likely to be in positions of power over the coming years.

As the national elections approach next year, this is a good time to ask how the post-Modi era in Indian politics will take shape. Although there is still no clarity on who will form the government next year, it is fair to assume that 2024 – and not before — will be the turning point for such a shift in Indian politics.

Ms Sahgal’s list is made primarily of dynasts, a consistent feature of Indian politics, in that not just the Gandhis but the Yadavs and the Scindias and the Stalins and Kanimozhis derive their legitimacy from the family name. Of the 20-odd politicians she features, it is the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders like Yogi Adityanath and Ram Madhav who buck this trend.

Ms Sahgal, who is credited with maintaining an air of neutrality in the debates she hosts on NewsX, is less concerned with hiding her biases here.  While she recounts the infamous encounter that Himanta Biswa Sarma had with Rahul Gandhi, she is certain that Sarma’s brand of politics emerges from his “eagerness to defend his masters”.

There is little analysis of the immigration issue roiling Assam, and how religion and demography have been intermeshed in the state’s border areas. Rather, the epithet “a blatant Hindutva poster boy” is patched on to Mr Sarma. There is no denying that Mr Sarma has been unsubtle in his remarks on Bangladeshi immigrants, but a more detailed analysis of the issues from a political journalist would have helped. 

Mr Sarma’s example is repeated in other profiles, in which Ms Sahgal presents little more than personality profiles culled from her interactions with the leaders. On Asaduddin Owaisi, she mentions that he is a moderate when it comes to his faith but refuses to discuss how he and his brother, Akbaruddin, repeatedly refer to the prime minister as a “chaiwallah”, not in a spirit of bringing up the latter’s humble roots but to mock him.

Similarly, the profile on Yogi Adityanath paints him as an entirely Hindutva-driven mascot in India’s largest state. There is some truth to the charge that Mr Adityanath will be the BJP’s fiercest Hindu-nationalist campaigner in 2019, given that Mr Modi will have to adopt a statesman-like aura as he seeks a second term. But to omit such important information as the universal immunisation against Japanese Encephalitis carried out by the Yogi administration in a profile on him indicates a pre-decided narrative.

But the biggest shortcoming by far of this collection is its refusal to engage with the central question of Indian politics today: Has Narendra Modi upturned a primarily caste/religion-driven model of Indian politics by his focus on development at the grassroots? From ridding villages of open defecation to providing subsidised cooking gas to poor households, has this government redefined political intent?

In her profiles of Rahul Gandhi and Jyotiraditya Scindia, Ms Sahgal refuses to engage with the question of why these leaders’ constituencies, Amethi and Guna respectively, continue to be backward. In a certain brand of mai-baap sarkar that was prevalent in India, the leaders deigned to get things done for the laity at their leisure. There was a clear distance between the ruling and the ruled, that continues to this day in a city like Gwalior, where the Scindias —first Madhavrao and now Jyotiraditya — have ruled for decades and are still called “Maharaj” due to their erstwhile royal status.

Can this dynamic work in the new India? The 20-something IT employee working out of a high-rise in a tech park in Bengaluru, perhaps a migrant from a small city in the north, can see the clear and present difference in the quality of life afforded to citizens who demand better governance against those who have been stuck in a time warp induced by the politics of patronage.

And for good or bad, it is Mr Modi who has prompted a definitive shift in the political landscape with his focus on infrastructure and on bringing basic amenities to the grassroots. This is exemplified also in his broader political messaging — his willingness to call himself the “pradhan sevak”, for example — that a Scindia or an Owaisi would not be caught dead simulating.

The Congress unleashed the reforms that are now reshaping the political landscape but the party’s deference to the Gandhi family will ensure that it is unable to wrest the narrative from a continually resurgent BJP. The prime minister often mocks the culture of Lutyens’ Delhi as a cocoon divorced from the real India. His government has made an effort to close this gap, which also happens to be the fount of power and legitimacy for some of the leaders Ms Sahgal chronicles without irony.