The current Lok Sabha has 81 MPs who are 40 years old or younger, an achievement considering the average MP is in his mid-50s and the recent prime ministerial contest was between 76-year-old Manmohan Singh and 81-year-old L K Advani.

The high number of young MPs, however, is less impressive than it sounds: 50 of the 81 young MPs come from political families. That’s a whopping 62 per cent who aren’t exactly self-made!

Even the kind of family ties is instructive: 33 of these young MPs have fathers as politicians, just six have mothers as politicians. Political uncles, brothers and grandfathers have three MPs each; two young MPs are married to politicians.

Of the 31 young MPs who don’t have relatives in politics, nine cut their teeth in student politics, two have RSS backgrounds while one, the Trinamool’s Shatabdi Roy, was a film star.

A state-wise analysis shows young MPs from Maharashtra, Orissa, Haryana and Punjab, including Lakshadweep’s MP, all have some kin or the other in politics. Not even a single MP from these states has made it without family backing. The trend is reverse in Kerala and Jharkhand; no MP from these two states comes from a political family.

A party-wise analysis of the young MPs in the 15th Lok Sabha also throws up some interesting trends. The Congress has the highest number of young MPs — 25 — a statistic attributed to MP Rahul Gandhi’s focus on youth and party cadres. However, out of 25, 22 have relatives in politics, including Rahul himself. Of the three young Congress MPs who aren’t from political families, two have risen from student politics, including Meenakshi Natrajan, the 36-year-old first-time MP from Mandsour, Madhya Pradesh, who was NSUI president.

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