When Lalu Yadav had to serve time in jail for the fodder scam, he could not have handed over power to anyone but his wife. Such illustrations can be multiplied to substantiate the argument that prosperous political shops with are patented by the ‘shop owners’. Modern democracy based on the principle of rule by the people is a product of great struggles against the practitioners of the divine right to kings, but in Indian democracy, the children of political families inherit the ‘empire’ of their parents.

C. Wright Mills once wrote a scathing condemnation of American democracy, describing it as power exercised by the ruling elite. In India, the ruling elite happens to be the Nehru-Gandhis, the Scindias, the Mulayam Singh parivar, and others — whether in Kashmir or Tamil Nadu. Sonia Gandhi is not alone.