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.

... contd.