Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Bofors gun corruption scandal in the late 1980s, few people would suggest that the family
is in politics primarily for financial or personal gain.
Positive committed motives can be ascribed to other dynastic rising stars of Rahul
Gandhi's generation such as Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sachin Pilot and Jitin Prasada, who are
all in their thirties or early forties. Scindia is the aristocratic heir to a maharajah's title
in Madhya Pradesh and to the Gwalior parliamentary seat where his late father, Madhav-
rao Scindia, was an MP. From widely differing backgrounds, they are all sons of former
senior Congress ministers and became ministers of state in the Congress government elec-
ted in 2009. Some were given further promotions. In the same age group, Omar Abdul-
lah, National Conference chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir and the son and grandson
of former chief ministers, is also in politics for constructive reasons, ignoring the advice
passed down from his grandfather Sheikh Abdullah, Jammu and Kashmir's first chief min-
ister, that 'politics is a dirty game and once you are in it, you'll never be able to get out'.
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Sachin Pilot, who is in his mid-thirties, is married to Omar Abdullah's sister, merging
two dynasties. To test his commitment, one has to go no further than his official bungalow
on Delhi's Safdarjang Road, close to the prime minister's enclave and opposite the exclus-
ive Gymkhana Club. There, every morning, this tall, slim and at first glance rather stern-
looking politician, holds a durbar for 100 or so of his constituents from Rajasthan and for
the poor from Uttar Pradesh (his family's home state) and elsewhere. They are given chai,
visit toilets (he's installed six to accommodate them), and wait to meet this grandson of a
rural Gujjar dairy farmer who went to Wharton in the US. 'It gives them a sense of belong-
they want done, while the others are able to talk about what they need - work transfers,
police problems, family feuds, buffaloes that have run away. This is a job a politician can
do.' I wondered as I left how many other senior politicians had this dedication - probably
not more than four or five.
Pilot says he had never thought of entering dynastic politics, but with hindsight it seems
to have been inevitable. He told me that he made his first political speech when he was
12, at a village meeting held by his mother, who was standing for Rajasthan assembly seat.
'They called me to speak, so I did, for about one and a half minutes. So I got recognition
and later an opportunity to run in elections.' His father, Rajesh Pilot, was a minister in the
Congress governments of the 1980s and 1990s and had been considering challenging Sonia
Gandhi for the party leadership not long before he was killed in a car crash in 2000. Sachin
was in college in the US at the time, and his mother took over Rajesh's parliamentary seat
while Sachin finished his studies. In 2004, it seemed natural for him to stand in her place,
and since then he has campaigned for the poor and especially for the Gujjars, who want
to enhance their official tribal status - he was briefly jailed in 2007 when he joined mass
Gujjar protests that blocked a highway to Delhi.
