The new Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has surprised everyone by defeating the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which is like the Congress Party of Japan. In the last sixty years, the LDP has been in power in all but two short spells. Hatoyama is the 51st prime minister of Japan. This is because even when it was firmly in power, the LDP had to distribute the top job among the heads of different factions. Each faction leader also had a dynasty and LDP was a multi-dynasty party. Hatoyama himself is the son and grandson of senior LDP politicians but he left the mother party and started his own party.

It seems to me that the problem in India today is not so much dynastic politics but that the Congress has only a single dynasty which can get the top job. This is why the Old Firm’s share of the PM’s job amounts to 38 years while nine other PMs had to share the remaining 24 years. Even now, the many dynasties in the Congress—Scindia, Pilot, Deora—have to give up any ambition of being PM. The entire fuss about YSR and his son succeeding is not that it is a terrible idea (which it is) but that the Congress has no moral authority from Delhi to tell Andhra Pradesh what to do about succession. Rahul Gandhi has done a sensible thing in eschewing office and devoting himself to rebuilding the party which grandma had wrecked. But that is his choice. If the Andhra Assembly Congress members want to elect Jagan then why should the high command prevent it?

... contd.