Families Galore - Implosion: India's Tryst with Reality - page 143

In 2009, he became minister of state for communications and information technology
and in 2012 was promoted to be minister of corporate affairs. At the age of 36, he success-
fully enacted the new companies legislation by first gaining support from coalition parties
and then steering it through parliament. The bill, which repealed 57-year-old laws, had
been pending for about a decade and, after receiving cabinet approval at the end of 2012, it
needed someone with Pilot's energy and drive to make it become law.
In an older generation, there is Naveen Patnaik, the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) chief minister
of Odisha, who is in his mid-sixties. He is a rare example of dynastic success rather late
in life, and he might be the last of the line. Naveen was a dilettante international socialite,
mixing with people such as Jacqueline Onassis and Mick Jagger, until he fell unexpectedly
into politics and became an MP in the late 1990s on the death of his father, Biju Patnaik, a
former chief minister of Odisha. Naveen's elder brother Prem, a Delhi-based businessman,
was not interested in entering politics, nor was his sister Gita Mehta, a well-known author
partly based in New York.
I remember Naveen talking emotionally at Delhi dinner parties about how ineffectual he
felt (and was) in the face of the state's appalling rural poverty, which he was personally en-
countering for the first time. He later became the state's semi-reclusive chief minister and
astounded both supporters and critics by being elected consecutively three times. 8 He has
managed to maintain a clean image with his electorate by reducing their exposure to petty
corruption, despite allegations that his government (and specific ministers) accept bribes
on large mining and other projects. He has never married, so has no heirs to succeed him.
Perhaps conscious that a rival Patnaik family had lost elections because voters had tired of
their dynasty, he has played down his own family links, and his brother and sister are rarely
seen in Odisha. So, unless one of them changes their mind and decide to cash in on the
family legacy, Naveen might close the dynasty, at least for a time.
Few have the sense of service of Scindia through his royal lineage or Pilot through his
rural background - both of whom are following on from their fathers, who were two of the
most respected Congress MPs of their generation and set high standards for their sons to
follow.
Dynastic Surge
There has been a surge of dynasties in India during the past decade, most of whom do not
have the strong public service credentials that can be attributed to the Gandhis and other
young politicians mentioned earlier. Defenders and apologists for what has been happening
argue that dynastic politicians have to go through the hoop of being elected, and that their
only advantage is the family brand, which eases their entry into politics.