But “small” in our political context means the clutch of regional and caste-based parties that have prospered since the 1970s. It can be nobody’s case that the Samajwadi party, the BSP or the DMK are any less venal than national parties like the Congress or the BJP. Some even smaller parties, such as Ram Vilas Paswan’s LJP or Ajit Singh’s RLD are one-man shows shorn of even the pretence of cadre-based decisions. That leaves the ‘Independents’, the smallest of parties, their naiveté matched only by their irrelevance. In the last elections, south Mumbai candidate Meera Sanyal, a clean-corporate type empowered after 26/11, lost her deposit. She probably got more column inches than votes.

The Lyngdoh Committee recommendations may even be self-defeating. While it is difficult to defend India’s opaque party system, the student wings of these parties are often the only democratic feeders into a nepotistic, filial party structure. Take, as a very small sample-set, the young (under 40) leaders in the current Lok Sabha. Of 81 young MPs, a full 50 have relatives in politics. Of the remaining, almost thirty per cent made their bones in student politics. In other words, if you are ambitious but without a family base, student politics is a major way to enter party structures and become a leader. The Lyngdoh committee assumes that party politics will corrupt student politics, but it ignores the reverse: student politics often purifies parties outside. By assuming the mendacity of outside parties and cutting off their only source of young blood, the committee’s prophecy will self-fulfil. Had these measures been implemented a generation earlier, we would have been denied many leaders who currently romp across the national stage — leaders such as Arun Jaitley, Anand Sharma, and the entire CPM top brass — who came up without godfathers. Who knows how many budding careers will be cut short by these recommendations?

... contd.