OK, so only two of the four combatants involved in the US presidential race can be called new talent, or new, young leaders discovered by that political system in the run-up to the 2008 campaign. John McCain and Joe Biden were known Washington faces. But Barack Obama and Sarah Palin are the discoveries of this campaign. They are lively, colourful, bold, beautiful, aggressive, talented and, most importantly, in their forties. They are the stars of this campaign. Both started with huge handicaps. One, because of his race, and because of the take-no-prisoners battle he had to fight for his party’s nomination; the other because of where she comes from, her political CV so far boasting offices as “small” as the mayor of a tiny, lost-cause Alaskan town, and then the governor of that politically insignificant state. Imagine the Congress’s chief minister of Pondicherry or Arunachal Pradesh being chosen to be the number two in its shadow national cabinet for 2009.

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.

... contd.