We jump from Alaska to Arunachal Pradesh for a very good reason: this article is about Indian politics. Irrespective of who wins, America has produced two political figures with long legs — ambitious, charismatic, articulate people in their forties who will enrich that country’s politics. When was the last time that our system produced new, young leaders with a pan-Indian appeal who caught the popular imagination like this?

In all of the last decade, we can note the rise of only three “new” leaders with pan-national appeal in varying degrees: Rahul Gandhi, Mayawati and Narendra Modi. We did not do much better in the 15 years before that either. After the rise of Rajiv Gandhi we saw the emergence of V.P. Singh. But after that, our record at finding new national-level political talent is about as good as that of Indian cricket’s in finding a fast bowler until Kapil Dev arrived. All the other leaders of this period have remained confined to their states: Jayalalitha, Mulayam, Lalu, Nitish, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, even Sharad Pawar. And what about the two big parties? They can argue that fate robbed them of some talent: Rajesh Pilot, Madhav Rao Scindia, Jitendra Prasada, Pramod Mahajan. They have failed to discover or build anybody new, capable of being recognised outside his pocket borough except, maybe, Modi.

Rahul Gandhi’s ascent is more a case of succession planning than the rise of new talent through any vicious intra-party competition. Given how the old Congress vote banks have depreciated, his challenge is much greater than that faced by any of his ancestors. He has to learn on the job, in a manner of speaking. And, regrettably, he has to learn, first of all, to deal in cynical, minimalistic coalition management and vote-bank arithmetic rather than have the opportunity — as his late father did in 1985, or Obama does now — to build a new politics, of new ideas. Change is the idea that fires popular imagination in a democracy. That is why Obama is so exciting now, and Rajiv’s first phase was so heady.

Modi and Mayawati have their own strengths and limitations. Modi is by far the most promising leader today, at least for his party’s pan-Indian supporters, because of his 2002 riots record and also for the patrician tradition in his party. The whole fixation with mythology has kept his party trapped in the old, Ram-Lakshman-Bharat-Shatrughan type of succession strait-jacket. An Obama had no seniority issue to leap-frog in his party. And now Biden, two decades his senior and one of his harshest critics during the primaries, has no hesitation being his running mate. A Modi, a Vasundhara Raje or an Arun Jaitley can have no such opportunity, no such level playing field.

We spend more time talking about the BJP here not because the party is more guilty than the Congress on this score, but because fundamentally it has a lot more internal democracy than the Congress. And while it is not quite as devoid of the dynastic pulls as the Left, it is still freer from that than any other party in India.

If empowerment of regional parties through coalitions is our new politics, Mayawati is the only leader (besides the brief, deceptive flicker from Chandrababu once upon a time) to have emerged from it with any appeal outside one’s own state. And while she too has many of the attributes new, breakthrough leaders must possess, we have to give the credit for her rise to Prakash Karat. His choice of her as the third front’s prime ministerial candidate (though not he, but Bardhan has stated that clearly) was brilliant. And it may have had dramatic results if the UPA had lost that vote of confidence. She would have then emerged as a giant-killer and lots of smaller, regional parties, including some UPA allies, may have jumped on a new political juggernaut. She has a new slogan, whether you allow her to call it sarvajan sambhav, or dismiss it as social engineering. She has energy, ambition, ruthlessness, flexibility, organisational skills and even resources. Very importantly, she has no ideological hang-ups. She leads a left coalition but is privatising her sugar mills and government hotels, building highways in PPP and withdrawing unemployment doles, has smashed her state’s brutal, Omkara-style campus politics and has made the teaching of English compulsory from class one. She is the right age, gender and caste. But she is in the wrong party or, rather, in the wrong coalition. But imagine how she would have transformed our politics had she been in the Congress or the BJP!

Which brings us to the original question. Why can’t the two national parties produce new leaders, as great parties in democracies routinely do: Obama, Palin, Blair and Cameron, Sarkozy and Merkel and, why not, even Putin? A new set of leaders with disruptive ideas and the magic to sell them to people and thereby re-define, even rejuvenate our politics. The short answer is, both, in their own different ways, have failed to provide a level playing field for their own talent. Even the CPM has succeeded in doing some of that, bringing about a generational shift and installing a new general secretary, just under 60. And while we may have arguments with his worldview, he has shaken up his party and enabled it to count for more than his less ideological, older predecessors would have done.

The top leaders of both the Congress and the BJP fret that they are producing Dalit, OBC and minority leaders. The point is, how can leaders come up when entry barriers are so high and the glass ceiling so low? The Democrats have got a second life because they discovered Obama, a modern, all-American, Harvard-educated “black”, as their new liberal icon. If the Congress was a meritocracy, maybe a Mayawati would have emerged there. That combination, of a depleted and yet India’s largest single vote bank and a new Dalit woman leader, would have been lethal. But such a thing is impossible. Rahul will now have to find a whole new Dalit leadership in no time, and since they will all be seen as part of the usual supporting cast they will never be able to challenge Mayawati for Dalit votes. And which Muslim has risen through the Congress ranks over four decades now? The BJP’s situation is worse. Forget the minorities, the different manner in which they treated Bangaru Laxman (a Dalit) and Dilip Singh Judeo (a blue-blooded Rajput), both caught on camera taking money, underlines its upper-casteist fixation. In fact, if you look at the party’s 25 most familiar faces, you will find more Muslims than Dalits; whether that speaks for its secularism or its casteism is a judgment you can easily make.

It is because of this that so little changes in politics, our battle-field of ideas remains so static. It is because of this, the non-renewal of ideas and minds, lack of new talent or even slogans, that our politics keeps slipping backwards, breaking further, rather than consolidating, with a centre of gravity that is weaker and wobblier by the day. All that in a rapidly democratising world that is producing new leaders and new ideas as never before in a hundred years.

sg@expressindia.com