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leader and chief minister, J. Jayalalitha, was the mistress of the late M.G. Ramachandran, a
former chief minister who broke away from the DMK and set up his own party.
Rivalries spurred by the pursuit of riches and power have disrupted many dynasties like
the DMK family in Tamil Nadu. This was spectacularly evident during the 2012 state as-
sembly elections in Punjab, where politics have been controlled by six landed families
since Partition. The best known are the current two rival party leaders - Captain Amarinder
Singh, 69, of the Patiala Royal family and leader of the Congress party, and Parkash Singh
Badal, 84, of the Shiromani Akali Dal, who in 2012 unexpectedly defeated the Congress
and became the chief minister for the fifth time since the 1970s. Amarinder Singh's wife
Praneet Kaur is a Congress MP from the family's home constituency of Patiala and became
a minister of state for external affairs in 2009. Amarinder Singh liked to show he was born
to rule - I once saw him browsing in a bookshop in Delhi's Khan Market while his fleet
of about ten Ambassador cars and Maruti jeeps, packed with gun-toting security guards,
arrogantly blocked traffic at the entrance to the market.
One of the most famous - and infamous - examples of self-serving dynastic greed, ag-
at 29, Lalu Yadav became Bihar's chief minister in 1990 and was forced to resign in 1997
when he was facing jail over a series of corruption allegations, notably a 'fodder scam'. He
was accused (and later convicted) of being involved in syphoning off Rs 950 crore from
the state government's animal husbandry department. He then planted his uneducated wife,
Rabri Devi, in the chief minister's chair, and their relatives fought for prestige and wealth
across the state. Between them, the husband and wife dominated Bihar's politics for 15
years till 2005 when they were swept from power in state assembly elections (and again
champion was doing nothing for them in terms of development. Yadav had come to power
on a wave that should have led to a new deal for the poor. Instead, he showed little interest
in the job of government and concentrated on building up his own image and only helped
his family and Yadav caste to improve their lot.
15
French surmised that, since the tendency to turn politics into a family business was being
emulated across northern India at the state level, with legislators nominating relatives, there
was no reason to believe it was not spreading to districts. Other sources suggest that in
Mumbai's 2012 municipal elections, where for the first time 50 per cent of the seats were
reserved for women, many of the women candidates were 'stooges for their politically en-
sconced kin', representing men in their families 'who are the back room boys'.
16
Evidence found later by French supports my theory that wealth and greed are linked with
survey findings with a report on the 2009 financial and criminal records of Lok Sabha MPs
